Lying near to the heart of mighty Rome's conception of itself were words of magical power. The seventh and last king of Rome, Tarquin the Proud, was offered nine books by a Cumaean Sibyl, a priestess of Apollo, said to contain divine utterances of the gods. But the price she demanded for these papyri was exorbitant, so the king waved her off. She responded by burning three of them and offered the remaining six at the same price. Tarquin again refused. So she burned three more demanding again the original price for the remaining three. Turning to prophets of his court (called Augurers), the king explained how things stood. They deplored the king's reckless treatment of the woman and the loss of the irreplaceable six burned books, which they set at priceless value. Whatever she asks for the remaining three, they said, pay it.
This remainder, forever after known as the Sibylline Books, were then stored in a guarded vault beneath the Capitoline Temple of Jupiter. With the rise of the Republic, the Roman Senate maintained tight control over the Books, which were overseen by appointed custodians. In 12 B.C. Augustus Caesar had them transferred to the Temple of Apollo Palatinus. Four centuries later, they were finally burned by order of the Roman General Flavius Stilicho because he perceived that their power threatened his government.
The Sibylline Books were understood to stand as a powerful and dangerous nexus between the divine and human realms. In this, they were not unique. They represented a topos, a category, in Classical Antiquity: words of power — books scattered throughout the ancient world having divine content. The Roman historian Seutonius reported that Augustus Caesar
|
collected whatever prophetic writings of Greek or Latin origin were in
circulation anonymously
or under the names of authors of little repute, and burned more than two thousand of them .... (Vita Augusti, 31) |
We get a glimpse of this hunger for spiritual power
in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles
in the person of
Simon the Magus,
who was willing to pay Peter large sums for the spiritual power he saw wielded by the Apostles
(Acts 8:9-24).
This extraordinary power we see displayed in its raw intensity
later in the Book of Acts:
|
Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists took it upon themselves to call
the name of the Lord Jesus
over those who had evil spirits, saying, "We exorcise
you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches." Also there
were seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, who did so. And the evil spirit answered and said, "Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?" Then the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, overpowered them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. (Acts 19:13-16) |
Upon seeing this terrifying display, people in Ephesus who been venturing into demonic magic repented:
|
Also, many of those who had practiced magic brought their books together and burned them
in the sight of all. And they counted up the value of them, and it totaled fifty thousand pieces of silver. (Acts 19:19) |
50,000 pieces of silver today would be valued at between $4 million and $24 million depending on which silver coin was being used. The devaluation of Roman money during the first century makes it difficult to say. In any case, it is a fabulous sum, a king's ransom. And this sum surely gauges the sincerity and contrition of these would-be wizards. It also helps us to grasp what people throughout the Empire were willing to sacrifice in order to obtain spiritual power.
During the modern period a hitherto unknown genre of ancient literature has come to light, called by the scholars today the Papyri Graecae Magicae (PGM), containing spells, curses, blessings, and ritual instruction for the practice of black magic. Confirming Seutonius' report of Augustus Caesar suppressing such material, our archaeological findings today attest that they began circulating in the first century B.C. and were widely available during Jesus' earthly life and in the centuries just following.
When St Paul evangelizes Corinth, he enters a city that was famously a hotbed of magical practices. In the words of Ronald Stroud, Clio Distinguished Professor of Classics at the University of California, Berkeley,
|
Excavations by the American School of Classical Studies have revealed a "cell" where
black magic was practiced at night high up on the slopes of Acrocorinth in the Sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone. It was established at roughly the same time as St. Paul's famous Christian mission to Corinth in the middle of the first century after Christ. ("Magic and Religion in Ancient Corinth," February 8, 2011) |
Here we get important background for St. Paul's letters to the Corinthians, a local church where we detect intense competition among the congregation in demonstrations of spiritual power and showy displays of spiritual charisms. The baptized would claim greater power based on who baptized them (1 Cor 1:13). The whole scene is one of frenzy for spiritual power.
Here also is the setting for the Descent of the Holy Spirit. Isn't it interesting that we say, descent, so clearly paired to Jesus' ascent only ten days earlier. The Lord, the Only-begotten Son of God, has ascended. And now descending is Heavenly Power: the Holy Spirit (Jn 14:26), the Spirit of Truth (Jn 15:26), the Comforter (Jn 14:26), the Advocate (Jn 14:16), the Teacher (Jn 14:26), the Spirit of God (Gen 1:2), the Spirit of Christ within (1 Pet 1:11) .... our words reach out but fail to capture His power and expansive Presence. And His Presence is known through words of power:
|
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues,
as the Spirit gave them utterance .... .... the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language. Then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, "Look, are not all these who speak Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs — we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God." (Acts 2:9-11) |
You see, language, words, are the prism through which the downpouring Spirit is being refracted: "In our own tongues the wonderful works of God" — words of power cutting a Heavenly swath through the entire human lifeworld. This power is everywhere to be seen and heard!
We remember the words of the Master:
|
And He said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, hereafter you shall see Heaven open,
and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." (Jn 1:51) |
Jesus describes a fluid situation in which the boundaries between Heaven and Earth have been blurred if not erased — a scene of unimaginable spiritual power surrounding us, permeating our world, unseen .... but also seen.
During a recent five-hour farm delivery to distant Hilo,
one of the Hermitage sisters
reflected on the clouds surrounding Jesus at His Ascension.
"Here is a Theophany," she said:
"The Son ascending to the Father, speaking with the Father,
surrounded by clouds, which manifest the Holy Spirit."
Later, we discussed the Holy Spirit as the Spiritus expired (ex-spired) from our own lips as the Breath of God. At the Creation of the world, God breathes out His Spirit over the void. He breathes His Spiritus into us. We become vessels of the selfsame Spiritus. St Job cries out in reverence,
|
The Spirit of God has made me;
the breath of the Almighty gives me life. (Job 33:4). |
Yes, the Spiritus resides within each man and woman to whom God has given life. On a cold day we are able to see it swirling before our mouths when we breathe out, a little analogue on earth of the clouds surrounding the Ascending Christ. The Holy Spirit is surely present everywhere the breath of human life is seen. The Risen Christ breathes His Spirit upon the Apostles at the founding of His Church:
|
And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them,
"Receive the Holy Spirit." (Jn 20:22) |
Even atheists use the phrase "breath of life."
And we instinctively understand it to be shared.
We resuscitate humans in extremis with it.
And
men and women are moved to press their lips together in acts of holy love and intimacy.
We might might well ask,
"Why not rub our elbows
or
touch noses?"
But it is the sharing of living breath which moves us into love's communion.
Over the past year people have told me that me a kind of bubonic plague has descended. As one who was charged to teach this historical period (the fourteenth century), I was bound to say, "I understand the analogy you are making, but the bubonic plague, Black Death, was mostly confined to Europe. What we have experienced in our Pandemic is unprecedented in the history of the human race: a universal plague.
I have been struck with an uncanny analogy. For a spiritual plague, which is also global in reach, preceded it. With the expansion of the Western culture of materialism, scientism, and a general collapse in religious belief, the image of the West, with its substance abuse, pan-sexuality, and invented PC-religion has been burnished upon the whole world — from Japan and Korea, across vast Russia, and throughout the Third and Fourth Worlds. This plague of the soul is more dangerous than its material counterpart because it has eternal consequences. Needless to say, it has not received the same attention in the media nor has provoked a response from government leaders. So its deadly tendrils continue to reach into every breathing human life and soul.
I say, "uncanny analogy" because the COVID virus, too, is a respiratory disease, choking living breath, a plague narrowing the human pathways that once took in the full measure of Spiritus.
Can this be a coincidence? An unprecedented and universal re-spiratory plague afflicting our souls following by an unprecedented and universal re-spiratory plague afflicting our bodies? I do not believe in coincidences. Can anyone dispute that this is the present state of the entire human lifeworld?
For many thousands of years humans have strived for spiritual knowledge, knowledge of the Spiritus. In the words of the Master,
|
"For I tell you that many prophets and kings have desired to see what you see,
and have not seen it, and to hear what you hear, and have not heard it." (Lu 10:24) |
Today, we celebrate the giving of all Spiritual Power. It is a free gift bountifully bestowed by God. Not exorbitant, but ours for the taking. As St Peter told Simon the Magus:
|
But Peter said to him, "Your money perish with you, because you thought that the
gift of God could be purchased with money!" (Acts 8:20) |
No costly books of magic spells or charms are necessary, but only a heart and soul open to in-spiration. This power does not limit us to the promised scope of magic books, summoning demonic spirits, but rather it opens to us relationship with Spirits of Light, angels ascending and descending all around us. It is a free gift, not limited to the elite, to Kings of Rome or to the Roman Senate or to pagan priests and priestesses, but to all: men and women, slave and free, old and young, Jew and Gentile.
The Power of the Spirit of God descends upon us. And we are the welcoming vessels of God's grace — filled to the full and grateful and reverent that God has done this for us with every breath we take.
In God's meaning-bearing world, nothing is a coincidence. And God does not jest. Where the Holy Spirit hovers, where His precious children are being strangled, where we look out on a spiritual plague that shows now sign of abating, God does not jest. On this year's high Feast of Pentecost (Trinity), let us look up stretching our lungs and souls wide in sincerity and earnest love, receiving the Holy Spirit. Let us turn away from every strangling toxin and particle, spiritual and material. Let us remember that a plague of death also passed through Egypt, which was a spiritual bondage as well as a material one. God does not jest. He does not send most sacred signs without utmost intention and having most serious consequences.
God's Spirit descends upon us because He loves us.
Let us return that love with the same serious intentions
and
ultimate consequence,
—
being fitting vessels for the Holy Spirit,
welcoming the Comforter and Guide,
and
being reverently taught by the Teacher.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
Amen.