For today’s edition of Sustenance Sunday, I offer a cross-post from my Journeying with St. Ignatius blog (see feed on left sidebar).
When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.”
Acts 2:1-4
Today’s meditation for the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola was on the above reading. As I was reading, I was drawn to certain phrases more than others. Among them were the following:
- “a noise like a strong driving wind and it filled the entire house,” v. 2
- “tongues as of fire,” v. 3
- “filled with the holy Spirit” and “speak in different tongues as the Spirit enabled them,” v. 4
Only once have I experienced such a noise — when I interviewed a Christian speed-metal band named Believer at their house and the music literally filled the room where the interview took place, though the band played in the basement below, I believe. It was a wall of sound. All senses blur, dulled except to that one sound, filling all of your being — until you are ready to explode with light like Neo in “The Matrix” at the end, until it’s breaking out of you.
The phrase “tongues as of fire” is not tongues of fire, but “as of fire” or bearing a resemblance to fire. The tongue, I wonder, if it was like a Rolling Stones tongue? Gross. Saliva dripping on to the them, but in a way, maybe it was, with the flames dripping on them until it burned out through them.
In verse 4, it was the Spirit that enabled them to speak and to proclaim: Each in their own tongue proclaiming, but one message, that of the Gospel.
Lord, let Your flame drip on me until it burns out through every fiber of my being. Amen.
