Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish

FR MICHAEL BIBLICAL IMAGERY

(Fr Michael Boakye Yeboah: Vice Rector of St Gregory Seminary, Kumasi-Ghana)

UNITY

            We are told that it was the “tower of Babel” episode that led the scattering of people on the face of the earth. According to the story, a united human race in the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating westward, comes to the land of Shinar. There they agree to build a city and a tower tall enough to reach heaven. God, observing their city and tower, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other, and scatters them around the world. With that people came to be divided along race, culture, nationality, and language.

            This division existed throughout history until the day of Pentecost. It was Luke writing a letter to his friend Theophilus, who placed some sacred words into the noblest of penmanship; when he described the unity that came to be after the speech delivered by Peter. The inspired writer wrote: “When Pentecost day came…now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem. At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd, but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language. They were astounded, and in amazement they asked, ‘Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans? Then how does each of us hear them in his native language? We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Capadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs, yet we hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God.’”

            The point I would like us to pay attention here is that though since Babel, they have been divided and could not understand each other; on Pentecost day though they accepted their diversity, they recognized that by the power of the Holy Spirit they became unity and could hear the language of faith. Today we have over one billion Christians speaking one language of faith. The beauty of the faith-language can be realized in the Catholic faith. No matter where one finds himself/herself, (s)he would not be completely lost in the Liturgical celebration of the Mass. To achieve this oneness of humanity, Jesus prayed before he left that all may be one. The goal of unifying the human race is on-going but has Covid-19 initiated a new culture of “social distancing” that seem to take humanity back to the towel of Babel’s culture of separatism?

            Social distancing is a good thing and not against the communal spirit of Pentecost. For humanity to meet, hug, and recreate again, it is better we all accept this new-normal. Social distancing will not keep us apart forever, as the Lord lives, our world will be healed and life will return to normal. Unity is evident in today’s readings. The First reading highlights the factor that in the Spirit of divine fruitfulness the Church from now on be fruitful, as was immediately demonstrated in the miraculous way all the peoples understood her language. This is the exact reversal of the hubris that led to the construction of the Tower of Babel, a haughty attempt of the human spirit to constitute a single international unity that would fly in the face of God’s unity.

            The second reading explains this explicitly. The variety of graces, powers, and services that are distributed by the triune God derive from his unity and point back to this unity. Finally, the Gospel reveals the source of this unity: the Son of God became man not at his own whim but was borne through the Holy Spirit into the womb of the Virgin. At Pentecost he will breathe out his unity in a windstorm and fire visible to all, public for the world and the Church. Let us stay united and fight this pandemic and by the power of the triune God we will return Covid-19 to wherever it came from. The Holy Spirit will cleanse and purify our world, please keep faith for help is on the way. The world has witnessed so many pandemics and Covid-19 is not the one to stay with us, this too will pass.