Take a close look at this Paschal candle, burning in full sight for the last time as we close out the Easter season today. Do you recall that night fifty days ago on which we first lit this candle? Do you remember the darkness? Do you remember the horrible hissing of the sound system, trying to distract us from the holy purpose for which we’d gathered? But maybe you remember the suspense of waiting for a new light to be kindled in the darkness. Could you hear the flick of flint striking steel, just before the church was illuminated by brightness?
In some Easter Vigils of years past, lighting the fire was a challenge. While I’m always slightly nervous that the fire won’t light, it always has. Indeed, sometimes it has gone up in flames a bit too vigorously. I well remember the Vigil three years ago during which the table supporting the fire pit caught on fire and an alert acolyte slapped it out with a towel. Was that part of the liturgy, someone genuinely asked? Not exactly, but perhaps it should be. The new fire signifies the dangerous unpredictability of life in Christ. It’s a risky thing to play with fire. It’s a risky thing to be baptized. It’s a risky thing to pray. It’s a risky thing to follow Christ.
We all know that when making a fire, a spark must ignite by touching something flammable.[1] In the case of the new fire at the Easter Vigil, a spark touches salt soaked in rubbing alcohol. So, when a flamed leaped from the fire pit onto the table a few years ago, part of the table ignited because it was also soaked in rubbing alcohol. The rubbing alcohol is what fuels the fire. Any good fire must be made ready so that it will ignite.
Of all the images the New Testament authors could have used to describe the Holy Spirit, fire may be the most understandable and yet also the most mysterious and vexing. Even scientists still consider fire to be a mystery. We may know what makes a good fire and how fires start, but there’s still something ineffable about them. Fire is an apt image for the Holy Spirit because it’s dramatic, sometimes uncontrollable, and hard to explain.
But it just so happens that in today’s Scripture readings, we get two vastly different images of the Holy Spirit. One speaks to our inner thespian, the other draws us deeper into the life of God. The image in the Acts of the Apostles is for showboats and those keen on high drama. Consider it. The disciples are gathered in one room, and the Spirit rushes upon them as a mighty wind, and tongues as of fire rest on their heads. They’re filled with the Holy Spirit, and they begin to speak in a variety of languages, and most amazingly of all, they understand those foreign languages! This is an epic story. Do you question why such wonders no longer happen among us? In an epic age, we want an epic manifestation of the Holy Spirit’s presence. Has that original Pentecostal fire just smoldered out? Have we done something wrong since tongues of fire haven’t rested upon our heads?
Or is it just that we live in a modern age where everything is dramatized for television, where we’re looking for the most obvious signs of the Holy Spirit among us. We want to measure spiritual success by great signs, by speaking in tongues and visible evidence of the Spirit’s power. We’re rather like Philip in John’s Gospel, who is seeking something visible and clear. Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.
And here, it may be that John offers us another image of the Holy Spirit’s presence, one that is quiet and profound, perhaps more realistic for our own day. In John, the Spirit is not a Pentecostal fire, because there is no Day of Pentecost. There are no tongues of fire, and there’s no commotion in an upper room. John doesn’t even attempt to define the Spirit as part of a narrative. The Spirit eludes our grasps, and above all, the Spirit is known in intimate relationship with the Father and the Son. As Jesus tells his disciples, the Holy Spirit dwells with them and is in them. The Spirit is with us and in us. The Spirit doesn’t just come upon us. The Spirit comes to dwell in us.
This same Spirit comforts, consoles, and encourages and is a good, faithful, and patient teacher, continuing to reveal to the disciples and to us the fullness of the truth that Jesus brought to earth. And like a good teacher, this Spirit will abide with us until our souls have been prepared to receive this truth. The Spirit is a Teacher that never gives up on the students.
But amid all John’s quiet, somewhat introspective images of the Holy Spirit, we’re prone to miss something that not even the world’s greatest short story writer could concoct. Did you catch it? Jesus says that he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do. This is utterly astonishing. And Jesus goes on: Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it. How could we make this up? How can this be true?
And Christ’s promise would seem like a license to abuse a gift, were it not for something needed on our part. It’s subtle, but it’s there. John is clear that only those abiding in Christ and in the Father will do such great works, and only those in that abiding relationship will properly ask for those things that the Father will give. Jesus’s promise is not permission to take advantage of prayer; it’s a call into mature, responsible prayer that is nothing less than allowing the Spirit to dwell within us—not outside us, but within us.
This could seem like something ambiguous if we didn’t return to that image of the new fire being kindled at the Easter Vigil. Remember that fire! Remember the salt soaked in alcohol and prepared for vigorous flames. Remember the quiet waiting in the darkness. And then remember that spark touching the elements in the fire pit. And then there was light!
We, in some sense, are the material in which the Holy Spirit’s flame is kindled, a mystery both incredible, profound, and unsettling. To be set ablaze with the life of the Spirit, we must be like good, prepared salt soaked in rubbing alcohol. While the Holy Spirit is always eternally present to set us on fire with love for God and to proclaim the Gospel to the ends of the earth, if our souls are not prepared to receive that same Spirit, the fire will be a tiny, unstable flame that peters out. Our whole lives must be an intentional formation to receive the spark of the Holy Spirit so that the Gospel’s light can shine in the world. The Christian life is about being ripe for ignition by the Holy Spirit. This is the spiritual antidote to the Church’s modern listlessness and malaise. And the life of preparation is the life of prayer.
This is the deepest mystery of John’s understanding of the Holy Spirit. Our abiding relationship with the Father and the Son and, then inevitably, the Holy Spirit comes through constant and faithful prayer. But because we’re so often like Philip, desiring a sign and a tangible revelation of the Father’s presence, our Lord himself gives us something to hang our hats on. And we find it here in the Mass on this Day of Pentecost and on every Lord’s Day that we gather to partake of Christ’s Body and Blood.
We, our selves, souls, and bodies, are with the bread and the wine, the fruits of the earth placed on the altar. We offer ourselves at the altar, steeped in prayer like salt soaked in rubbing alcohol. We bring our lives drenched in prayer, along with our sins that need forgiving and our suffering that needs healing and our enmity that needs reconciliation. And bathed in prayer, we’re present on that altar as the priest prays over the bread and wine and over us as well. The priest prays for the Holy Spirit to come upon us and the gifts of bread and wine, and it’s as if a spark touches salt, and all on that altar is set aflame. And we come forward to consume Jesus’s Flesh and Blood so that “we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.”[2] It’s just as Jesus promised: the Spirit dwells with us and is in us.
Here, there’s no audible rushing mighty wind. There are no visible tongues of fire. But here, there’s a quiet, introspective, and mysterious drama of the Holy Spirit coming and making a home within us. Our lives, saturated with prayer and present at this Eucharist, are set afire so that we can go into the world to love God by keeping his commandments and loving our neighbors.
This is how we’re taught by God. This is why we find our deepest union with God in this life when we come to his altar. This is how we can do something so incredible that we could never make it up. This is how we can and will do works greater even than the Christ. And it’s all because when we’re steeped in prayer, with the assurance of Jesus’s promise, we will evermore abide in him and he in us. A spark touches salt, and a new light is born. And the whole world is illuminated with the glory of God.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Day of Pentecost
June 8, 2025
[1] St. Symeon the New Theologian in his Second Ethical Discourse uses this image to describe the Spirit igniting a divine seed within us.
[2] From the Prayer of Humble Access, the Book of Common Prayer, p. 337