Fire and Breath

“Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit.’ Having said this, he breathed his last.” Luke 23: 46-47

With those words, Jesus expired. The word expired derives from the Indo-European word spies, that means the sound of breathing. So, the night that Jesus died, our darkest night, breathe left him. The wind left him.

The disciples had the wind knocked out of them as well. Holed up in a room together, afraid for their own death. They were breathless. But we know, this was not Jesus’ last breath. Jesus’ death was not the not end of God’s breathe in the world.

On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women came to anoint the corpse and learn from men in dazzling white that He has risen! Gasp. Can you hear the women breathing in? Inspired?

Did the disciples regain their breath? The women came to the eleven to tell the disciples the news: He has risen! But they were slow to believe. Slow to breathe. But on the road to Emmaus, after Jesus was revealed to them in the breaking of the bread, they said to one another, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he [the stranger] was talking to us on the road?” Slowly, but surely, the fire that never dies was being stoked. A fire had been lit within their hearts, and when they breathed in the presence of their living Lord, their hearts burned. They were beginning to breathe again Imagine it like this: A gentle wind blowing on still-warm embers.

We know how important the wind is to fire. When a fire is about to go out, we breathe on the embers to get them to light up again. The Spirit, too, is essential to life, essential to keeping our hearts afire. Remember the Great Easter Vigil. We begin with the fire that never dies. The one is lit even in our darkest night. And with it we light the Paschal candle. From that Pascal candle each of us lights our own candle and the world lights up. We recall our salvation history—the movement of the Spirit throughout creation: God’s wind swept over the face of the waters, calling forth life from the formless void. God’s wind swept up a pillar of cloud by day and ignited a pillar of fire by night as a guide for the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. Later, the four winds of God breathed life into the heap of dry bones that Israel had become. Breath came into them, and they lived.

Ten days after Jesus ascended into heaven, fifty days after Jesus rose from the dead, on the day of Pentecost, the disciples gathered together. This time the Holy Spirit poured upon them: “there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind.” With this violent wind, their burning hearts burst into tongues of flame. Their flames burned so bright that all could understand. With the light of the Spirit, they could see and dream once more.

Inside you and inside me is that same fire. Our hearts, too, burn. How can we ignite those flames so that they burst into the world? So that we can see and dream once more? Invite the Spirit inside you. Breathe in: Come Holy Spirit, Come. Breathe out: Come Holy