Musings on Pentecost

Musings on Pentecost with no Sermon

By Father Richard Cipolla

I will celebrate Mass on this feast of Pentecost alone in my private chapel as I have been doing for many, too many, weeks now.  Even though I know I am not alone at Mass, for the whole Church is present at every Mass, it is spiritually difficult to not offer Mass with the presence of the people, for they assist me in a real way in the Offering of the Holy Sacrifice. I wrote no sermon for today’s Mass of Pentecost.  And in musing on this yesterday,  I remembered suddenly one of the verses of Eleanor Rigby:

Father McKenzie,
Writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near

I got up very early this morning and went out to retrieve the newspaper. I still get the Sunday NY Times. I know some of you are shocked by this, but I believe I have to know clearly and understand those forces in this world that have set themselves against the Truth of Christ and his Church. As I walked back to the house I was struck deeply by the deep blueness of the sky. Its depth and beauty gave me great joy, and I thought of Hopkins’ poem, “God’s Grandeur”, with which I shall end these musings.

 I glanced at the Sunday Review section of the Times. I saw that it was blank except for script towards the bottom of the page in jagged and lopsided letters. It said: “The world is broken.” The world of the Times is indeed broken. But we have always known that God sent his only begotten Son to repair the world of sin and death by the Sacrifice of infinite Love on the Cross. But we also know that in a real sense today that the Church is broken. The pandemic has shown how broken and ineffectual the Church really is. The abandonment of Tradition after Vatican II is the source of the brokenness. Its Christ- given mission to evangelize the world has been abandoned. And the heart of this abandonment is the ruthless abandonment of the Mass of the Tradition. 

But the darkness of this world is no match for the infinite Spirit of God who is Love. And so I close in the real hope that we will be at Mass together soon at the altar in our churches, the only place Mass should be celebrated.  And I leave you as a Pentecost gift Hopkins’  wonderful poem.

God’s Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J.