Readers and friends: The explosive Feast of Pentecost will be upon us soon. I use that word explosive deliberately because that is exactly what happened. Scripture tells us that on the 50th day after the Resurrection of Jesus an event occurred in Jerusalem that could only be described as the Spirit’s descent in wind and fire. That’s a fact.
Now, allow me to set aside that biblical event for a moment and make a claim that no theologian, to my knowledge, has ever made. I am going to suggest that this well-recorded event in the Acts of the Apostles was actually the Second Pentecost. The First Pentecost, I insist, occurred some 13.8 billion years earlier when our universe as we know it today first burst onto the scene, the result of an explosion scientists name the “Big Bang.” The elements of the Big Bang, scientists say, were fire and wind. In short, what we call the universe today and all its stony contents came into being 1 trillionth of a second after the “Big Bang.” That’s what I call “Pentecost 1.”
What evidence do we have today for the so-called “Big Bang?” Surprisingly, only in recent months, scientists stationed in Antarctica using a super telescope discovered that there are even to this day ripples in space-time that have now been thought of as the first tremors of the “Big Bang.” These fluctuations called gravitational waves are believed to be an aftershock of the “Big Bang.” Furthermore, in the theory of space-time-fabric, scientists claim that before the Big Bang, all matter in the universe was microscopically small. At the moment of the first explosion, a bursting forth called inflation, expanded the entire universe into the form we know and observe today.
The researchers claim that they have discovered direct evidence for the first time of what Albert Einstein predicted in his General Theory of Relativity — gravitational waves. So, what does all this have to do with “Pentecost 2?”
Let us presume first that the “Pentecost 1” and “Pentecost 2” were not simply accidents of nature. Nothing, no activity in the universe, occurs outside the power of the Creator. Secondly, let us presume that, as the philosopher Aristotle claimed, fire and wind and water are the three most basic elements in the universe. Thirdly, could we presume that both “Pentecost 1 and 2 were events that marked the beginning of something radically new, something never even to be imagined by humankind: The birth of the universe and the birth of the church.
Finally, could we not claim that all created matter, all created things have the right to be sustained in their identity? Let us presume, therefore, that the Creator will not abandon the universe. Likewise, let us hope that Christians have come to appreciate the work of Christ in the universe and that they will gladly see to its continued growth in our own age and time.
Before concluding this reflection, let me add a line from one of my favorite philosophers, the French paleontologist and Jesuit priest, Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: “Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world we will have discovered fire.”
Scriptures for June 8
Acts 2: 1-11
1 Corinthians 12: 3-7
John 20: 19-23
The writer formerly served the Anchorage Archdiocese as director of pastoral education. He now lives in Notre Dame, Indiana.
'Pentecost 1 was 13.8 billion years ago'
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