Pentecost: Forged in Fire

We all know the classical elements of the ancient world: wind, water, earth and flame. And it’s easy enough to see how the first three represent gasses, liquids, and solids, the three common phases of matter. But what about the fourth? Fire represents not a phase or type of matter, but rather the process of transformation. Fire is a reaction, a catalyst, that changes whatsoever it may touch.

Fire turns ores into metals, flesh into food. It sterilizes water and cauterizes wounds. In a wonderful paradox, burning a field makes it fertile for planting. We often overlook this transformative aspect of fire because we in the modern world have come to associate flames primarily with destruction, with bombs and burning buildings. We forget that every lightbulb, every engine, is bottled fire.

Little wonder, then, that the Bible constantly compares the presence of God to burning flame: think of the pillar of fire in the Exodus, the altar of fire in the Temple, the seven lamps that are the seven spirits of God burning bright before the Throne. Yet Scripture is at pains to point out that holy fire, the fire of God’s own presence, always burns but never harms. We see this several times in the Bible.

Think to Moses and the burning bush. It was not the fact that the bush caught fire that alerted Moses to the presence of the Lord. Such is common enough in the desert. Rather, what revealed the presence of the One God to Moses was the fact that the bush was not consumed, not harmed by the flames. To the contrary, the bush flourished amidst the fire.

Or think to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the Book of Daniel, three faithful men who would not betray God by worshipping an image of the Babylonian king. In fury, the king threw all three into a furnace of blazing fire, so hot that it consumed even the guards who tossed them in! Yet the fiery furnace would not harm them, not even allow the scent of smoke to linger on their garments. Instead the furnace burned away the ropes that bound them, releasing them from their imprisonment. Moreover, the fire revealed a fourth figure walking amidst the trio, who had the appearance of a god.

The fire of God’s Spirit only destroys wickedness. Everything else it causes to flourish, transforming it, glorifying it. Behold, the fire of God makes all things new! It burns the impurities from out of the impure. Some will be saved, St Paul writes, as through fire.

This has led wiser Christians than I to wonder if perhaps the fires of God’s presence and the fires of hell aren’t in fact one and the same; the notion being that if we identify ourselves by our sins—by our pride and lusts and impurities—then we will experience the flames of God’s Spirit, in this life or the next, as something painful, destroying who we think we are. But if we know that our true identity lies in Christ, in the image of God within us, then we shall experience the fires of God’s Spirit as something wondrous and liberating, bringing us to light and life and glory, remaking us into whom we were meant to be all along!

Recall that Jesus spoke of separating the sheep from the goats. Yet at the Temple in Jerusalem, both sheep and goats are placed within the same sacred fire.

In the second chapter of the Book of Acts, the Holy Spirit descends upon the Apostles as tongues of flame, and they are utterly transformed by the fire. Before the coming of the Spirit, these men and women were frightened and doubtful, hiding away from the world. But with the Spirit they are bold and fearless, driven out into the world, preaching in every language of the nations there assembled. God has remade each one of them, not into different identities, but into better versions of themselves, purer versions. God has forged them by fire into whom they were always meant to be, and thus they are now more themselves than they’ve ever been in their lives.

Pentecost is the fiftieth and final day of Easter. In the Old Testament, Pentecost marked the giving of the Law to God’s people Israel. In the New Testament, Pentecost celebrates the gift of God’s Holy Spirit to His New Israel, the Church. This is the same Spirit, the very life and breath of God, who is breathed into us at our Baptism, who binds us to the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, drowning us in our sins and raising us to new life in Him.

The fire of the Spirit burns within you even now: a tiny deathless flame who consecrates you, body and soul, as a living temple of the Lord; and who binds us all together as members of the Body of Christ, with Jesus our head and the Spirit our breath. Our charge then, Sir Knights, is to feed that fire within, to inculcate inside our souls the discernment and the discipline necessary to listen to the still, small voice of God. The more we attend to the Spirit, the more we become who we are.

That fire that burns within us, the flame of the Holy Spirit, cannot be smothered and will never die, for indeed the Spirit is God Himself alive in us! But to borrow an image from C.S. Lewis, our lives are like corroded mirrors. The more we scourge away our dross—the more we liberate ourselves from all the clutter, without and within, that would separate us from the love of God—the more clearly we will reflect Christ’s own light in our lives.

The Spirit is not silent. He moves through the churches and speaks through the Scriptures. We will find Him in prayer and penitence, in humility and holiness. We will find Him in private devotion and in communal worship and in selfless service offered to our neighbor in love. John the Baptist had it right: we must decrease, and He must increase. The more we seek out Christ in our lives, the more fully we become ourselves; the best versions of ourselves; the selves whom we were always meant and want to be.

Pentecost is the flipside of Christmas. For in the incarnation and birth of our Savior, God became Man and dwelt among us, as one of us. But at Pentecost, God enters as fire into our very flesh and bone, that Man might now become one with God. The Holy Spirit is alive inside of you, the Spirit of God the Father, the Spirit of Jesus Christ. He burns within you even now, a light to draw you home, a love to make us one. He is a little altar inside of us, forever raising our prayers and our souls up to heaven; a little forge, forever burning away all that would keep us from God.

We are like irons, you and I, dark and cold, placed in the fire—who at length are transformed by the fire, made one with the fire, made hot and bright and blazing with purpose unfettered at last! How wondrous it will be on that glorious day when at length we all see each other face to face. Then shall each and every human life be revealed in its unique perfection, each of us utterly distinct, yet all of us true images of Christ our Lord. This is the work of God the Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier. And it will not be complete until the salvation of the world, when God at last will be all in all.

Right now, today, and for the rest of your life, the fire of God is forging you, from the inside out, into a creature fitted for heaven. And, oh, my brethren—who can imagine what you will look like by the time that He is through?

In Jesus. Amen.

-Eminent Grand Prelate Sir Knight Ryan Stout