Mass of the Holy Spirit
Sept. 24, 2006
University of Dayton Chapel
Father James L. Heft, S.M.
Isaiah 11: 1-4; I Corin. 12: 4-13; Luke 4: 16-22
It is both an honor and a challenge to preach on this occasion, a mass of the Holy Spirit, a so-called “Red Mass,” named such because of the red vestments worn by the celebrant to represent the fire of the Holy Spirit. The tradition of the Red Mass goes back at least to the 13th century when typically a cardinal or a bishop invited the academic and professional communities at the beginning of an academic year to pray for the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. It is an honor to preach, therefore, because this is an important occasion. Of course, all celebrations of the Eucharist are important—in fact, at each Eucharist, we Christians believe that earth and heaven meet us in the risen Christ. But this is also a Eucharist dedicated to praying for wisdom. For me, it is the topic that constitutes the challenge of preaching this afternoon. It is not that I find preaching to lawyers and judges and police officers that difficult; the challenge is preaching thoughtfully about wisdom, as though I really knew what I might be talking about. Would a wise person even attempt to do so? But, that is the theme we have been asked to explore this afternoon.
The wisdom I shall try to talk about is, thanks be to God, not something I myself have created out of the fabric of my own experience. Rather, the wisdom for which we pray this afternoon is described well in the three carefully selected biblical readings we have just heard proclaimed. First, a word about each of the readings, and then some reflections on what they tell us about wisdom. Our first text from Isaiah describes the qualities of the ideal king from the family of David. He possesses gifts of intellect—wisdom and understanding; he possesses the ability to act as he should since he has the gifts of counsel and strength; and finally, he is devout, for he enjoys a “spirit of knowledge,” or, in a more familiar biblical phrase, “the fear of the Lord,” fear being understood not as being frightened of the Lord, but as a spirit of deep and genuine reverence and respect in the presence of the Lord. I once saw a brightly colored banner that read: to understand is to stand under which is to look up which is a good way to understand—a saying that cleverly describes reverence, or in the words of the first reading, “the fear of the Lord.” It is, as it were, better to look up at God, and everyone for that matter, rather than look down upon them. That first reading also speaks of judging neither by appearance nor hearsay. We shall return to that quality after we look at the next two readings.
The second reading, taken from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, a community crippled by various internal divisions, strikes a different note: it speaks of diversity and unity, or more accurately, about a diversity of gifts that complement each other. The source of that complementarity is the Holy Spirit who gives individuals gifts for the common good. And finally, the Gospel returns us to Isaiah, but makes the extraordinary claim that the anointed of the Lord of whom Isaiah speaks, the wisest son of David if you will, is none other than Jesus himself. Jesus, for the Christian believer, is wisdom personified.
Taken together, these three texts suggest to me three reflections I think are appropriate for our gathering here this afternoon. All three of the texts presuppose the ability on the part of someone, or more likely, of members of a community formed in a tradition they cherish, to reflect and write down what is most significant for living a life that is worthwhile. It is not for nothing that the Hebrew Bible contains an entire section entitled “wisdom literature.” It is filled with proverbs and sayings and a sort of practical sense of what a person must do to live well with others and to achieve an inner sense of peace and direction. This ability to reflect and write down thoughts about the meaning of life is important. It is also something few of us in the professions seem to have time to do. Marilyn Robinson recently published a novel entitled Gilead. The story takes place in the Midwest in the 1950s. It is about a Presbyterian minister in his 70s who, ten years before, married a younger woman ten years before, and with her had a son, who is now about seven years of age. The minister, however, is in poor health; in fact, he knows he will die soon. There are so many things he wishes to tell his son about life, but his son is too young to understand. So he begins to write about all the things he wants to tell him, bits of wisdom that his son will understand only when he gets older. It is a wonderful novel and is beautifully written.
But how many of us find the time to do this sort of reflection and to try to pass on to others what we believe is most important in living? Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, a professor at Notre Dame, worries about the character of the students, especially those that go into the professions, who we seem to graduate from our universities. He asks:
Do we really want them to become what, on the best evidence that we have, recent graduates of the best research universities have tended to become: narrowly focused professionals, immensely and even obsessionally hard working, disturbingly competitive and intent on success as it is measured within their own specialized professional sphere, often genuinely excellent at what they do; who read little worthwhile that is not relevant to their work; who, as the idiom insightfully puts it, “make time,” sometimes with difficulty, for their family lives; and whose relaxation tends to consist of short strenuous bouts of competitive athletic activity and sometimes of therapeutic indulgence in the kind of religion that is well designed not to disrupt their working lives?
MacIntyre’s paragraph long question forces us who are today’s professionals to examine the way we live. Indeed, wisdom in the scriptures, and this is my second reflection, is not a speculative and abstract exercise on questions about the nature being and the existence of free will. In fact, in the West, beginning with the Greeks and extending into the early Middle Ages, philosophy were first a set of personal practices, ways of living that were disciplined and balanced. Perhaps it is only my own lack of such balance, but it seems to me that many people with whom I work seem to be chronically over-extended, too busy to be serious students and practitioners of the biblical understanding of wisdom. As both educators and practitioners, we need, do we not, to look carefully at how we live and examine the example we give.
My third and final reflection returns to an important phrase in the first reading. Isaiah says that the ideal son of David does not judge by hearsay or by mere appearance. Moreover, the wise person, we read, judges especially the poor with justice. In our legal system, it is often the poor who cannot afford the legal help that would make it more likely that they will be judged justly. All the more then do we need judges who judge wisely. And judging wisely is connected in some mysterious way to living wisely. Thomas Aquinas tells us that judgment is the highest act of the intellect. Why, because when we judge rightly, we are in touch with the reality about which we judge. And when we judge rightly on a regular basis, we exercise a quality that is best described as wisdom. Since it is impossible not to judge—even the decision to suspend judgment is a judgment—all of us need to do whatever we can to make it more likely that we make wise judgments.
These three reflections—that most of us in the professional communities tend to live unbalanced lives, that wisdom requires living a balanced life, and that wisdom is the habit of making right judgments—these three reflections underscore the need we have to live in such a way that our professional lives will reflect our daily lives, and will most importantly, embody a wisdom that will, through our judgments, bless the entire community, beginning with the poorest and most vulnerable. That is one very big challenge. That is why it is appropriate that we gather here this afternoon and pray together for wisdom at this Mass of the Holy Spirit. May God bless us in our prayer. Amen.
