Biography
Fr. Richard Fragomeni is Associate Professor of Liturgy and Homiletics and Chairperson of the Department of Word and Worship at The Catholic Theological Union of Chicago, Illinois. He holds degrees in theology, religious studies, liturgy, and music, and is in great demand across the country as a lecturer and advisor on the topics of spiritual renewal, worship, and music. Fr. Fragomeni is also the Spiritual Director of the Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii in Chicago’s Little Italy. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"The Holy Spirit Who Speaks Through the Prophets"  
 
                 Come, Lord Jesus, send us your Spirit;
                 Renew the face of the Earth.

The Roman Catholic Church has rediscovered a gift. We have rediscovered the gift of the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the oncoming of the Second Vatican Council thirty years ago, a new Pentecost was ushered in the Roman Catholic Church. In our liturgy and prayer forms, the Holy Spirit now finds a permanent place among us once more.

For the Holy Spirit is the rush of God. She is the breakthrough that transforms and erupts, that creates and recreates, and that engenders the miraculous. For when the Holy Spirit speaks, enemies turn to one another, nations seek the ways of peace, water is impregnated as life giving baptismal font, oil is made a balm for the sick, bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, and all are brought into communion. For when the Holy Spirit moves among us, all is made new and a disjunction happens in which the unexpected becomes the expected and the surprise of God appears. For when She speaks, She always declares that God’s ways are not our ways. She speaks powerfully and Her speech is always associated with the prophetic: the prophetic speech of the Spirit.

The prophetic speech of the Spirit is the creative critique of established powers whereby an order may block or suppress the places where God wishes to act. The Spirit, when She speaks, decries any interference to the movements of God’s creation and re-creation. For God’s ways are not humans’ ways. It is a powerful speaking that both affirms and challenges what is and what has been and what has been planned. The Holy Spirit, when She speaks, offers alternatives to greater creativity, to life and to dignity, and to the liberation of all peoples from sin, death and the letter of the law.

So we come together to meditate on the Holy Spirit who speaks the prophetic word, a dangerous word. And we come together to meditate on ways in which that prophetic Spirit has spoken in the past and continues to speak to us today.

                 Come, Lord Jesus, send us your Spirit;
                 Renew the face of the Earth.

And so may I suggest these ways in which the Spirit has spoken, the strong voice of the prophetic? First, She has spoken through the prophets of old. That motley group of people: the tender of trees, those who were too young or too old, too sinful, and too mealy mouthed. The Holy Spirit spoke through these prophets of old at decisive moments in Israel’s history. And they came speaking of hope anew, of a new creation in the midst of the breakdown of established institutions. They spoke of destruction and they spoke in the Spirit of an alternative, pointing to the new possibilities of God breaking through our world. They spoke of promise and covenant—new covenant—and a future of holy mountains dripping with wine and food in abundance for all peoples. When the prophets spoke the prophetic word of the Spirit, they challenged the institutions.

They challenged the laws of sacrifice, for instance, because somehow Israel had institutionalized the law of sacrifice. Sacrifice became simply the slaughter of bulls, cows, lambs or pigeons. It had become narrow in meaning and the prophets who spoke the powerful word of the Spirit preached a breakthrough in sacrifice. We read in Isaiah, chapter 58, verses 1-9, that when the Spirit spoke through them, sacrifice no longer meant offering fatted cows on altars in the temple. The prophets decried that practice and declared that the sacrifice that God wanted was the inspired sacrifice of faithful and just living, where the hungry were fed, the widows and the orphans were tended, and the poor had the good news preached to them. When the prophets spoke in the Spirit, even the law of sacrifice had to become anew: God’s way.

The Holy Spirit also spoke through Jesus. At His baptism, the Spirit descended upon Him and He was taken up into the power of God. By the power of God and by the power of the Spirit, He was driven into the desert. And the Spirit in Christ proclaimed a newness to the baptism that John did. For Jesus’ baptism and Jesus’ gospel was not simply for the forgiveness of sins. But in the Spirit something new was ushered in by Jesus. For he spoke not only of the forgiveness of sins but of God’s reign, God’s terrible mercy, and the outpouring of love that ultimately would be manifested in the blood of His own cross. The Spirit in Christ proclaimed the liberation that would come to all peoples, of a new world meant for the sinners, the broken, the marginalized, and those who had been forgotten. Thus prophetically, Jesus reversed the order, even of the Sabbath law, and He spoke to women and strangers and outcasts and sinners. The Spirit driven life of Jesus dislodged and subverted the oppressiveness of the established powers, religious and political. And in the Spirit Jesus surprised the whole world with a new way, God’s way, which is not our way.

The Spirit also spoke in the apostles, that fearful group of men who were lodged in that upper room and at Pentecost were shaken by the fire and the wind that changed their lives and made them bold and faithful proclaimers of a new way. A way not of circumcision, but a way of the heart that would be open to Gentiles and Jews alike. A way of the heart that would be open to people who sought God with sincere hearts.

By the fourth century the apostolic tradition was passed on to bishops. And even in them, the earliest bishops, the Holy Spirit spoke of reversal. In one of the ancient documents of the fourth century church the bishops are told: "Bishops, if you are sitting on your throne in your cathedral and there in the back of your church a poor person comes in, ragged and smelly, without a place to sit, Bishop, give that poor person your throne, even if it means you have to sit on the floor." Can you imagine what kind of reversal would happen if in a cathedral in the United States at the midnight mass on Christmas Eve a bishop—the succession of the apostles—were to do that kind of prophetic activity and change our experience of power and authority?

The Holy Spirit continues to speak in the charismatic community of the baptized where the baptized are now again discovering and rediscovering the unleashing of the Spirit that they have received in oil and in water. The clerical ways have changed. In the Roman Catholic community the emergence of the gifts of all the laity that work together with the clergy—gifts of the laity and charismatic gifts of the community—are not some nice, superfluous addition. But rather they are to be exercised as full, active and conscious chrisms for the up-building of the body of Christ and the transformation of the whole world.

Finally, the Holy Spirit speaks the prophetic word for those who will hear Her through the mouths of the poor, both the marginalized and the oppressed poor. Poverty is great and oppression is great and the prophets struggle. The traces of the Spirit continue to declare to us, from the mouths of people who are beginning to become subjects of their own lives, that there has to be a new way of economy and justice. And so the Spirit speaks prophetically in the mouths of the marginalized: in women’s communities, in liberation communities, in advocacy communities for those who speak out for the unborn and for those on death row, those who speak for freedom and liberation and away from the oppression caused by gender, sexual orientation, race, religion or age. For when the Spirit speaks in the mouths of the poor, She speaks from the underside of power and God appears once more.

I’d like to leave you with three questions. The first is this: How do we test the truth, that this Spirit is speaking truly? What criteria do we use? May I suggest that when She speaks, it is always a language of inclusivity, of service and of freedom from bondage and sin.

The second question: Why does the Holy Spirit have such a hard time speaking prophetically, even after we have rediscovered Her in the Roman Catholic Church? Why are the prophets stoned and Jesus crucified and the apostles martyred and the chrism of the people silenced? Why are the poor still forgotten and overlooked? Why do we forget Her? Or do we institutionalize Her prophetic voice too much?

And finally, what can we really hope if we will yield ourselves to Her prophetic speaking in our midst? What can we really hope for in our world? I think we can hope for two things. She will get us off our dead horses and She will reverse everything. She will reverse it all. She will even reverse the popular Nike commercial. And in the city of Chicago I bow to Michael Jordan, but She will even reverse the popular slogan that Nike has made famous. For Nike says, "Just do it." But the Spirit who speaks the creative word through the prophets will even change that. For it will no longer be "Just do it," but it will be, "Do it justly, do it compassionately, do it lovingly, do it boldly, do it with a full heart of God and do it so that the world may be renewed and the face of the Earth may be changed. Do it justly. For the Holy Spirit speaks and when She speaks the prophetic word, everything will change.

Amen.

Interview with Richard Fragomeni
Interviewed by Lydia Talbot

Lydia Talbot: It was not undetected that you used the pronoun "she" with reference to the Holy Spirit. Tell us, Father, how did you come to that theological understanding?

Richard Fragomeni: I came to that because if I were to use the pronoun "he," I would be just as wrong because the pronoun "he" and the pronoun "she" do not capture the fullness of the person of the Spirit who is neither male nor female. In a theological discourse like this I wanted to draw attention to that. I would be just as wrong to call the Spirit he or she. And I didn’t want to call the Spirit "it" because the Spirit is a person. So I deferred to the female pronoun because for so long we have deferred to the male pronoun and I just wanted to shatter people’s imagination.

Talbot: But the underpinning of all of that understanding is inclusivity.

Fragomeni: Certainly. An inclusivity in God and also an inclusivity in the human community. As Roman Catholics we are now in the process of understanding how do we use language for inclusivity within our liturgy. But within our theological discourse it is a little easier to do it because we see that the truth is the Spirit is neither male nor female nor both. Somehow we have to use one or the other.

Talbot: The understanding of the Holy Spirit that you conveyed demands a radical action.

Fragomeni: Absolutely! I truly believe that the Holy Spirit who spoke through the prophets continues to speak prophetically and it is radical. It reverses everything, even the religious institutions. I think that as a Roman Catholic priest I have seen the Holy Spirit working in our communion by reversing our world view, reversing our understanding of church and world and that relationship, and reversing our understanding of who God is for us and for others.

Talbot: To paraphrase the German Christian martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, to see the events of history from the perspective of those who suffer; in short, from the reviled...

Fragomeni: Exactly. That’s why I mention the fifth point that the Holy Spirit speaks through the mouths of the poor and the marginalized because it seems to me that from that underside we hear something of God’s message coming through.

Talbot: Fr. Fragomeni, you are a distinguished scholar and theologian in music and liturgy. When did you first know that you wanted to be a priest?

Fragomeni: I was three years old.

Talbot: How was that?

Fragomeni: I just knew! There was no question in my mind that I wanted to be a priest, to serve God, and to serve the church. It has just grown over the years. I am ordained now twenty-two years. I am delighted to be part of the Roman Catholic Church at this wonderful, exciting time of church renewal, ecumenical dialogue and inter-religious dialogue. I believe that the Spirit has drawn me and I’m in the right ministry.

Talbot: So you were a child of the church. And your Italian-American heritage, how has that been a component in the way you worship and the way you pray?

Fragomeni: The Italian-American blood, if you will, or the genetic make-up of the Italian-Americans has a very vivacious, lively energy. It’s the best, I think, of what Catholicism is. That’s why we are called Roman Catholic and Rome is certainly located in Italy. Not to discount the multicultural dimensions of the church these days, but there is something about the Roman Catholic Church as an incarnation of symbols, signs, music and art, relics, popes, purgatories, rituals, and stories and scriptures that I as an Italian just get into because we tell stories and we like to eat and we love to celebrate. Those are the kinds of things that as Catholics we do best.

Talbot: What is the sign and symbol for the gospel message in this day?

Fragomeni: Christ crucified. The Christ who is crucified, the Christ who in agony is still being crucified. The Christ who cries out from the cross and breathes the spirit from the cross. The symbol is the crucified Christ and if we forget that, I think we forget the gift of the gospel.

Talbot: The gift of the gospel that you’ve conveyed so authentically for us today. As I said to you at the end of your message, I am so grateful for you. We are all grateful. Thank you , Fr. Fragomeni.