Whit Monday recalls Ascension in Calgary

Am not interested in acquainting readers with old English, nor running a catechetical lesson on Pentecost Monday, 50 days after Easter and 10 days after Ascension Sunday, but Lola Andang still fingers her rosary beads in earnest and in case the renegade Christians in our readership wonder, this is the first day the mighty friendly ghost Casper appears solo in the liturgical calendar!

Christian traditions observe the day of the sanctified Casper (the Holy Spirit in the old lingo) being given to the followers of Jesus at Pentecost. If Jesus Christ ascended into heaven, the third party in the triune godhead descended on Pentecost. Whit Monday is the day after, usually a time to baptize new congregants to a Christian covenant.

OK. To the infidel unschooled in the finer points of the triune godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not three separate persons. “Persona” is “face” in Chinese, “mask” in Greek, so all three are the same dynamic, process, and substance, though experienced differently. Thus in religious parlance, it is not the godheads’ nature that is at stake but rather the story of our experience. Father as creator is affirmed to be trustworthy. The Way-Life-Is, all of it, is good. Son is the acceptance of one’s uniqueness and unrepeatability, best lived not in the anxiety of being saved but by being expended to the hilt, even unto death. Holy Spirit is the future widely open and free. One only has to decide. Alleluia!

We will leave Lola Andang with her beads and her devotion to Mary full of grace. Our concern is the experience of awe and the awesome, enough to join a covenant of the awed ones. This is the instinct, intuition, intellect and intention of the ones who don the “white” (thus, the “whit”) shirt or blouse at Pentecost to fellowship under the aegis of the Son (ze child, male or female, capable of playing the Christ-role), the one who confronts us with our propensity to wait for a Messiah to extricate us from any predicament we are afraid to be in—whether it be a broken heart or an empty pocket book—and declares that no Messiah is coming. Ze brings that as good news now and evermore!

When I wrote that 2031 is my metaphor of “completed life,” one of our readers replied that she did not worry about her death since God will take her away when He (sic) pleases, and I should not worry about mine either. We obviously did not make our point clear. The issue is the living of one’s life, not having a “bahala na/bathala na” stance favored by many of my Malay compatriots who would rather leave the deciding to the fickle finger of fate.

Aye, there’s the rub. My Bathala says, “Yo, why don’t you just take that life of yours and walk! You are free!” Some calling themselves disciples, decide to keep a wake, a solemn but despair laden one, on the waiting. Sometimes, some walk their glory into the annals of human history!

My 2031-year metaphor is a statistical probability number. It does not mean that by 12.15.2031, the aorta will cease supplying oxygenated blood into my circulatory system. It could very well do that before then. Or, still do a few laps on the left ventricle of the heart down to the backbone past the appointed hour. 

To be a white shirt on Whit Monday is to understand that life as it is given can be received in its entirety as trustworthy and know it so in one’s bones! The self we see reflected in the mirror is exactly the significant person sufficient to intrude on others who have yet to find courage to be, and just keep doing it! And the unknown tomorrow, often the cause of foreboding and fear, is actually open, neither determined nor encumbered. One can decide to just be exactly the way one is, just be it!

I attended a multicultural party at the Ascension parish in Calgary, Canada the day before Ascension Sunday. Fr. Abbie from Goa in India (tried the Portuguese “tudo bem” I picked up in Brazil after the Mass but it did not register) was a live wire from the opening of the program until he had to leave for a funeral, and then, to the 5pm Mass. He acknowledged the presence of a Methodist and Presbyterian in his audience, and we cruised along as he webbed his way from Christian metaphors to the reality of his diversely multicultural audience.

Whit Monday celebrants know the covenant group they joined. Major ancient religions have so many splinter groups but the Sunni/Shia divide in Islam is a walk in the park compared to the various combatants in Christianity’s interior castle. My point of accountability is in the metaphor of the “Holy Spirit.” Does my covenant group see life as open and free, urging us to be innovative and creative all we want in the expenditure of our lives?

The voices that surround us are many, and the lifestyles they recommend are varied. To be pentecostal is more than being tongue-quick with “Praise the Lord” or sincere in raising one’s arms upward to urge the Holy Spirit to come. To be pentecostal is to be fearless and free. Period. One already has cosmic permission from the Holiest of Holy TO BE. 

For the new white shirts of Whit Monday, live well!