What turmoil we’ve experienced this Easter through Pentecost Sunday! Revisiting, rethinking, the tumultuous First Season may help.

The drama of spring didn’t close with the Resurrection. The Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost, seasons of turbulent Seeing, Discovering, and Experiencing, together cemented God’s promised continuing presence and strengthened purpose in communities and individuals. Today, we re-discover and re-see these momentous events especially through images created over time, which can help us see more Now.

These windows at St. Stephen’s pair key moments after the Crucifixion: women discovering an unexpected absence (Jesus’ empty burial clothes and tomb) with a messenger announcing his return to life, surmounted by Jesus’ ascent to heaven. In between came more discoveries. Jesus unexpectedly and repeatedly appeared to disciples, then vanished—new with the Resurrection. He revealed his reasons before departing. These miracles enabled his apostles, Jesus contended, to see the truth of his claims that he’d rise after death. He thus proved to them his divinity and fulfilled promise. Proclaiming this witness worldwide, he stated, constituted their next mission—but only when God provided new powers.

St. Stephen’s Ascension window is simple like Luke’s account, unlike traditional images that teem with celestial pomp. It permits us, like Jesus’ followers, to see Jesus’ parting benediction and promised bond with us in heaven.

The apostles’ next chapter began 10 days later, with a spectacular miracle in an ordinary room where those gathered celebrated the Jewish spring harvest, Shavuot. The Holy Spirit suddenly roared in as a flame-like presence into those seated within (Luke 24, Acts 2). That mystic union conferred divine authority upon Jesus’ chosen and fire to their mission, including “other tongues” that revealed the Word to worldwide communities. The first to experience the new power were Jerusalem’s devout foreigners drawn by the mysterious roar. They marveled at understanding the Galileans at table who spoke of the “wonderful works of God” as if “speaking in our own tongue” (Acts 2: 8, 11). That’s powerful hearing as well as speaking.

The union forged in divine fire established the apostles as a community in God through Jesus Christ. For some, that marks the birth of the Church that Jesus announced repeatedly. Luke called this momentous feast “Pentecost,“ Greek for 50th (day after Easter). The apostles also felt the Holy Spirit’s entry, Experience of the divine within. That presence, with its given powers, propelled them into action with purpose: Experience with feet afire. Thereafter, no individual or community would be without such enabling presence if invited.

Artists who represented such Seeing and Experience adapted scripture to their mediums and world.

This medieval image is typical, featuring the Holy Spirit as the dove that scripture places at Jesus’ baptism. That’s understandable: How to visually render the Holy Spirit's arrival as SOUND? Western images often include Mary because Luke includes Jesus’ women followers at this Shavuot; Mary’s also the apostles’ “mother,” thus the revered mother of the new Church.

We’ve recently adopted a powerful alternative motif for Pentecostal Seeing with promised Experience: isolating the Holy Spirit as the flame about to fill us. The flame shifts meaning in different spaces.

In church windows (here, I gather, a skylight in a 1960s gabled ceiling), these luminous flames embrace as community those below who see them or are washed by their light.

Digital images like this instead transform our devices into personal contemplative spaces. Such electronic Seeings complement online meditation and group worship like St. Stephen’s. They suggest Henri Nouwen’s call for the Holy Spirit, his source of spiritual life and guidance when struggling in the dark, inspired by Pentecost. Nouwen’s Pentecost prayer includes these words: “I cannot pray without the power from on high, the power of your Spirit . . . I am waiting Lord. I am expecting . . . Do not leave me without your Spirit. Give me your unifying and consoling Spirit” (Jesus: A Gospel, Orbis, 2001).

The virtual flame I show here, posted by an American Catholic group, instead calls for the spiritual force to engage with our world’s needs. Might we use such digital Seeing to draw the fire within, to help us clarify and pursue our purpose, whatever it is?

— Suzanne Glover Lindsay, St. Stephen’s historian and curator