Either Pentecost or Babel
Simone Riva - “Why do we hear them speaking in our own languages?” (Acts 2:8). The sign that something new has happened, that that “sound, like a mighty rushing wind,” has not left things as they were, is contained in that question asked by the people gathered in the Upper Room, where the apostles were locked in for fear of everything and everyone. Suddenly, the fact that they came from different places is no longer a problem.
The logic of the Tower of Babel is turned upside down, as well described by the then Archbishop of Munich and Freising in his homily for Pentecost 1977: "While they were building together, they suddenly found themselves building against each other. And while they were trying to become gods, they ran the risk of no longer even being men, because what is most human in them was destroyed: agreement and the ability to understand one another" (Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, Come, Creator Spirit. Homilies on Pentecost, Lindau, Turin 2006, p. 12).
Luke, in the text of the Acts, speaks of “native language,” thus excluding the sudden ability of the apostles to express themselves in Greek, the lingua franca of the time, and making us understand that it was not even a particular acumen that enabled them to agree with reasoning or strategies. Rather, the Holy Spirit enabled the apostles to reach people at their point of origin, in the language they learned when they were born to enter into relationship with reality.
The gift of Pentecost has to do with the first language, in which every person feels at home, where terms are not misunderstood and accent inflections do not confuse meanings. This explains the amazement of the “crowd that gathered in bewilderment because each one heard them speaking in his own language” (Acts 2:6). In fact, amazement will become the true new language of the Spirit, which even precedes the ability to express oneself. It is no coincidence that one of the signs of amazement is to remain “open-mouthed,” without needing to say a word.
God places humanity before his work, and this brings hearts together. Benedict XVI reiterated this divine method in his homily for Pentecost in 2006: "Remaining together was the condition set by Jesus for receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit; the prerequisite for their harmony was prolonged prayer. We thus find outlined a formidable lesson for every Christian community. It is sometimes thought that missionary effectiveness depends mainly on careful planning and subsequent intelligent implementation through concrete commitment. Certainly, the Lord asks for our collaboration, but before any response on our part, his initiative is necessary: it is his Spirit who is the true protagonist of the Church. The roots of our being and our actions lie in the wise and provident silence of God."
When we make ourselves the starting point and rely on our own attempts, sooner or later we return to the method of the Tower of Babel and, in the name of the highest ideals, instead of being one for each other, we find ourselves “suddenly building against each other.” With great realism, Benedict XVI reminded us that this risk is for everyone, even for Christian communities.
It is not uncommon to see the dynamics of Babel even among Christians: relationships that cool because of worldly logic of power and control, banality and distractions that become the protagonists of dialogues and initiatives, emphasizing one thing or another to always appear one step ahead, struggles and subterfuges to eliminate the other and impose oneself. God allows all this, however, so that the method of Pentecost does not change: I must be there.
If there is no one to say “I” in complete freedom, the Spirit would have no one to rest upon. Thus, the gift of unity flourishes, as Pope Leo presented it in his homily on Sunday, June 1: "The Lord does not want us to unite by becoming an indistinct mass, like an anonymous block, but he wants us to be one: 'As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be one in us.'"
The unity for which Jesus prays is thus a communion founded on the very love with which God loves, from which life and salvation come into the world. And as such, it is first and foremost a gift that Jesus comes to bring. It is from his human heart, in fact, that the Son of God addresses the Father, saying: “I in them and you in me, that they may be perfect in unity, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them as you loved me.” Christ places the Trinity as the paradigm of true unity.
And so that this does not remain mere words in history, the Holy Spirit bestows charismatic gifts as a challenge for the whole Church, which can thus enjoy “a Pentecost still in progress” (Verbum Domini, no. 4). Charismatic gifts that, entrusted to concrete men and women, demand to be actualized and not simply repeated, as Jesús Morán emphasizes in his beautiful text Creative Fidelity. The Challenge of Actualizing a Charism (Città Nuova 2016): "As is the case with the Tradition of the Church—since it is the guardian of Revelation—the principle that it is never identified solely with a mere written or oral transmission also applies to us. True Tradition does not concern something that simply survives, but something that has been, is, and will be. It is not therefore a matter of repetition but of continuation towards an ever broader actualization, and this does not depend solely on documentary evidence, which can even be risky or fragmentary, and in any case always susceptible to interpretations that are also problematic" (p. 24).
Since many are capable of “repeating,” but not all of “actualizing,” this will remain an insurmountable criterion for verifying what remains in history of a gift of the Spirit, avoiding finding ourselves, almost without realizing it, distracted and resigned in the pursuit of something else, with the face of a discourse that is formally correct but substantially worldly.
This is because, as Don Giussani recalled in one of the crucial moments in the life of Communion and Liberation: “For many of us, the fact that salvation is Jesus Christ and that the liberation of life and of man, here and in the hereafter, is continually linked to the encounter with him has become a ‘spiritual’ appeal.
The concrete reality would be something else: it is trade union commitment, it is securing certain rights, it is organization, work units and therefore meetings, but not as expressions of a need for life, rather as a mortification of life, a burden and a toll to be paid for belonging that still inexplicably finds us standing in line" (Viterbo 1977).
For this reason, Morán specifies that the actualization of a charism “consists in creating the conditions for those who receive its message to experience receiving it from the very soul of the founder” (Ibid., p. 33). Pentecost, therefore, happens again today, opening wide, as on its first day, the doors for humanity to an inexhaustible challenge for the conquest of its true self, moved and amazed, so much so as to remain “open-mouthed,” so much so as to raise the question: “How is it that each of us hears them speaking in our own native language?”
