Pentecost in a Divided World

Pentecost by Glenda Dietrich

Fr. Carl Chudy, SX

In our work in dialogue with those of other faiths and with those who do not espouse any particular faith at all, we are concerned not only to make meaningful connections with those who do not share our worldview and faith with respect and in dialogue, but also to encourage our own faith brothers and sisters how important this is for all Catholics and Christians to engage in. When I share these experiences, as I often do in parishes and with groups in many places, I am given the response, “Have you converted them yet?” It saddens me when I hear this because it indicates we understand so little of what it means to share ourselves and our faith with those who do not share ours. It also shows we have little practice in it.

I understand conversion as much more layered and complex an experience than merely deciding, in a blink of an eye, that “Jesus is Lord” and “I want to be a Catholic,” completely ignoring the life journey that brought our brothers and sisters to who they are today and to what they believe or do not believe. It is our life experiences that have shaped a journey that brings us to certain conclusions of who we are and what we believe in. The theologian, Bernard Lonergan speaks of conversion as an experience like, “falling in love with God.” As most people know, falling love is ordinarily not instantaneous or all of a sudden. It is the fruit of an experience that comes over a period of time, patiently coming to know one another and to gradually deeply understand each other. This change in our minds about each other precede the changes in how we think and behave with each other. Dialogue with those who do not share our faith begin in listening to each other’s life journeys.

Any Catholic or Christian can look into the mirror and look back to their own life journey that has brought

Market Day Dreams by Betty LaDuke

them to their understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Christ, with both positive and negative experiences, woundedness, as well as healing. Our own faith journey is not so simple. Our own conversions are gradual, entered into with great resistance and encompass an entire lifetime to come to grips with. We are like the women in the panting to the right, Market Day Dreams by Betty LaDuke that show them waiting in the market to sell their fruit and daydreaming while they wait for customers. Their dreams rise to the spirit world where the ordinary is so intimately tied to the desires and urgings of the Divine, and to each other.

My ongoing conversations with those of other faiths and with humanists and atheists uncovers, first and foremost, our mutual life directions that have brought us to very different places. While some humanists and atheists come from non-religious families, many do not. Some of my friends who consider themselves atheists have chosen to be so only gradually over a long period which often included painful experiences in churches, synagogues or mosques, some are former Catholics. Uncovering these wounds requires empathy and compassion. As a Catholic priest, I not only carry the desire to bring companionship to others that is birthed from my faith, I also vicariously carry the burdens of our Church that has indeed abused and hurt others in certain circumstances. I bring another perspective of our faith which is to be like a “field hospital after a battle”, seeking to bring healing hope to any who carry the wounds of life, quoting Pope Francis. The mutual listening, compassion and respectful dialogue between us begins that healing. This is one experience of conversion for both of us: they seeing that our Church can be life giving, and I, cognizant of the courage required of those hurt by the Church to open their hearts up to me in the first place. In this way, conversions seem to be always mutual to some degree.

This is one sign of the Pentecost event. The biblical image of Babel where the enormous diversity of the world in culture, language, and belief are brought together through the power of the Trinity into the dream of Jesus when he prayed to his Father in heaven in the 17th chapter of John: “Father, may they be one as you and I are one.” What a privilege to be part of enfleshing the dream of God brought to us by Jesus, empowered by the Spirit to help make it real.