With respect to Lin Manuel Miranda — and bearing in mind that a title cannot be copywritten — what or where is “the room where it happened” for you? The first reading and the Gospel for Pentecost (Acts 2:2; Jn 20:19) describe the descent of the Holy Spirit and its gifts upon our ancestors when they are gathered in a room.
Can you picture the room: thick walls with high narrow windows, lit by candles and torches? What is the mood in the room — fear of persecution, in John’s description? Or despair, the kind of despair that sent Cleopas and his companion out of Jerusalem and on the road to Emmaus (Lk 24: 21)? Have you noticed that Thomas is absent? Are you ready for what is about to happen? Of course not, no one is. It won’t be the last time we’ll be surprised by God.
This story comes from the desert tradition, some three centuries after the first Pentecost. Why didn’t I encounter it sooner, in all the years I was going from place to place seeking — what? I don’t know. Another room, another city, another chance? My mother says she has three pages in her address book for me. Here is the wisdom I was missing, from the sayings of the desert fathers:
A brother asked, “I have found a place where my peace is not disturbed by the brethren; do you advise me to live there?” Abba Poemen replied, “The place for you is where you will not harm the brothers.”
When my oldest friend and his wife had their first child and carried him into the living room — the same room where we ate takeout Lebanese food and watched — again — some ’80s movie to which we had formed an inexplicable attachment, to his wife’s bemusement (“You know all the dialogue — why are you watching it again?!”), that was the room where I came to understand the miracle of life. Once we were two, then three, and now four — with every increase a blessing.
In my second year in a brotherhood, arriving at the foothills of the San Raphael mountains in California for novitiate, having left behind my phone and laptop and music player, and seeing my small room with a single bed, a bureau, a desk, a lamp and a chair, I thought, “How am I going to make it through this year?” We had chapel four times a day and daily Mass; classes in the morning; chores in the afternoon; one day of recreation a week; and one day a week off campus for ministry, with every day beginning and ending in that room. At the end of the year I thought, “How can I leave this place of peace?” The Lord said, “Simplify, simplify,” and imagine that — God was right.
I close with a revelation that I have long known and that I trust more and more as loved ones pass on, the promise from Jesus, that “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?” (Jn 14:2). Lead me, O Lord, lead me.
Father Wotypka is parochial vicar of Pax Christi in Eden Prairie. He is a priest of the Province of St. Joseph of the Capuchin Order.
Sunday, June 8
Pentecost Sunday
