If we concentrate on the description of the descent of the Holy Spirit of God upon the nascent Church today, we discover that there are three stages in this beautiful mystery. First, we observe that the coming of the Holy Spirit is an answer to fervent prayer, then there is the sound of a driving wind, then there are the tongues of fire, which are the visible manifestation of the Spirit Himself.
The coming of the Spirit is in answer to fervent prayer to which the disciples, together with the Mother of God give themselves after the Ascension of the Lord into Heaven. For those nine days, the Apostles and the tiny Church pray assiduously for the gift that Christ had promised them when He parted from them. He had promised that they would be "clothed with power from on high," and that they would receive "the promise of the Father." Naturally, the Church did not fully understand what these words meant when the Savior uttered them right before being taken up into Heaven. Even without understanding fully, they gave themselves to this fervent prayer, to prepare themselves for whatever it was that they were to receive.
This same kind of preparation has become the model for all the Church's preparations: for her various feasts (those times during the year when we meditate on particular mysteries with special concentration), as well as times of retreat, preparing individuals in the Church to enter upon certain offices or tasks. Those who are to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders normally pray and fast for a minimum of three days before their ordination. Those who will enter monastic consecration pray and fast according to the selfsame pattern, and, in the not too distant past, it was the custom even for individuals preparing for marriage to enter into the same kind of retreat.
This kind of preparation is very important for us. It is an underused tool in our Christian life at this stage of Church history. We have become a people who rarely fast, even in Great Lent, and, generally, the thought that we might resort to prayer and fasting in times of individual or family importance is very far from our minds.
Fervent prayer and fasting are an underused tool. Failing to use this tool has frustrated the action of the Holy Spirit in our lives. What is that action that it has so frustrated? A driving wind and tongues of fire.
When the Spirit comes upon the Apostles and the young Church, it is a driving wind, because the Spirit is purifying us from sin. We lay ourselves open to this purification when we make prayer and fasting, and penance in general, a part of our life. This is the same Spirit from God, which in the Psalms "strips the forest bare." In other words, no matter how big and threatening our problems and anxieties are, the Holy Spirit can sweep them away with our sins, preparing us to receive His grace.
The Spirit, when He comes upon the Apostles and the young Church is also "tongues, as of fire." It was Saint John the Baptist, who predicted that the Messiah would baptize in the Holy Spirit and in fire. Here we have the fulfillment of that prophecy. The Holy Spirit is fire because our God is a consuming fire, consuming the chaff of sin, but filling us with light and warmth, as dead creatures raised to life again. The fire is "tongues," because this light and warmth is communicable to others as well, even as fire can light other fires. By virtue of our baptism, we have been crowned with the Holy Spirit, "a tongue, as of fire." It is our task to communicate that fire to the world around us. It is the fire of the love of God. It is this same fire that the Lord Jesus spoke of when He said, "I have come to cast a fire upon the earth. O that it were already ignited." We have a fire to cast upon the earth around us, the same Fire. If there is no evidence that it is already ignited, we need to get busy.
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