Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli

Divisions in America go deeper and wider than state lines. Ethnicity, housing, income, race, faith, abortion, euthanasia, and, with increased rancor, politics: all these separate us one from the other. A fractured government. Politicians constantly belittling and embarrassing one another, intent to destroy the political careers of each other. A surfeit of disdain against organized religion. Schools failing to educate our inner-city poor. Streets strewn with the homeless and the addict. Many people rightly recognize that something is fundamentally awry with our society.

Our Founding Fathers worked hard to establish a government that protected the rights of the individual. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Yet, today, for too many, a child in the womb has no right to life. Nor does an elderly person with a terminal illness. Or, for that matter, a person whose illness or disability makes them a burden to others. The violence and poverty in our cities leaves little room for the pursuit of happiness. Has our Founding Fathers’ dream died with them?

Many have awakened to our government’s inability to translate into reality the principles that our Founding Fathers bequeathed us. “Only 10 percent have a great deal of confidence in the overall political system, with 4 percent having a great deal of confidence in Congress, 15 percent in the executive branch, and 24 percent in the Supreme Court” (Jay Reeves and Robin McDowell, “Divided American: Pondering whether America’s still great,” June 9, 2016).

It is all too easy to blame career politics where vested interest takes priority over the good of others for our problems. Somehow we are all involved. This is our society. We make it a healthy society by our commitment to moral values or we doom it to failure by promoting personal autonomy over and against the laws inherent in human nature. Whenever Americans insist on their autonomy to break the Ten Commandments carved on stone tablets, the Constitution and Bill of Rights written on paper mean nothing. No law, whether divine or human, can make society stable and healthy. Only people can do that.

As a people, we need to shift our primary focus away from political and economic entitlements. We need to move away from an overemphasis on rights and pay more attention to duty. Not what others owe us, but our debt of love to them! Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor and publisher of Tikkun magazine has said, “We need to build a society that promotes rather than undermines our capacity to be loving, caring, intelligent, cooperative, and ethically and spiritually sensitive. The present society destroys rather than enhances these qualities.”

Building a society that promotes love is first and foremost a matter of the heart. A heart that recognizes every other person as brother and sister. Certainly, not easy. But, more than possible because of what God is doing in us and with us and for us. Ever since the day of Pentecost, he is transforming our hearts by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

In building the Tower of Babel, man had turned away from God and tried to construct a society on his own. God let man’s folly confuse him. No longer one language. The result: conflicts, strife and disagreements. However, Pentecost reversed Babel. On Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came down with a rush of wind sweeping away the divisions of race and language, uniting God’s people. The Holy Spirit was the fire that now burned as love in hearts transformed by grace.

God’s timing of Pentecost was intentional. On the morning of Pentecost, when the disciples were freely gathering at the Temple in Jerusalem to pray, so many of their contemporaries had no freedom. Only one out of every five people were free. The others were simply the property of someone else. Women, temple prostitutes, foreigners counted for little. Yet, all that changed when the Holy Spirit came upon those first disciples and their three thousand converts to Jesus. Why? Because hearts were changed.

No matter what their background, their language, their race, their gender, people from every race and nation received the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38-41). An unmerited gift. A democratic gift, erasing the divisions and embracing each person as loved by God. In the brilliant light of the Holy Spirit, those first Christians saw every other person as brother and sister (Gal 3:26-28). They recognized each person’s inherent dignity given by God. And, there was unleashed the power to transform society.

Because Pentecost is an ever-present event, we can honor the dignity of every other person and thus shape our society to God’s design. Divisions can cease. The poor can have their share in God’s gifts. The stranger welcomed. The sick and disabled treasured. The child welcomed to the banquet of life. The young given the chance to mature. The elderly respected. God is pouring out the Holy Spirit on us this day. There is hope!