It was with great irony that on Pentecost I attended worship in the Cathedral of Pisa (yes, THAT Pisa – the leaning tower is the sanctuary’s campanile, or bell tower), and I barely understood a word of what they said the entire time. Sure, I could make out a few things – Veni Sancte Spiritus, in nomine Patris et Filli, et Spiritus Sanctu, and pieces of the Nicene Creed – but overall, the words were lost on me.
Yet, God still spoke: through the ring of the bells and the bellowing of the pipe organ; through the frescos and the stained glass and the enormous icon of Jesus in the chancel; and perhaps especially through the marble font at which I remembered my baptism, linking me with the centuries of sinners and saints who found themselves linked together by the power of a Spirit that still helps people hear the good news in our own language.
So, as I prayed today, that’s what I was praying for: for me and for my church to be able to share God’s story and how people find their place in it in a language they can understand, whether that be in words or music or art or service, or any of the thousands of other ways that it can be made available to them. To quote the great poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins:
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
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