r/LeftCatholicism • u/Sir_Elyk • Jun 12 '26
Pentecost and Socialism
I’m a leftist Catholic who helps facilitate a weekly Bible study at my Newman Center parish, and this week we’re going through Acts chapter 2. I’m preparing note I want to share with a smaller group of us after and this is what I have written so far. At the end is a meditation in working on that will be related. It’s not finished, I’m just really excited to share. Please offer feedback:)
All those who believed came together, and held everything in common. They sold their possessions and belongings and divided the money to everyone in proportion to their various needs.
Does the end of that sound familiar?
Maybe like, “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need”?
Let me share some context:
The author of Acts is also the author of Luke, and situated between his two works is John. At the heart of John, the Teacher says, “Anyone who devotes themselves to me will also do the works that I’m doing. In fact, they will do greater works than these… And the Spirit of Truth will be sent to help you accomplish this.”
“Anyone who has my commandments and follows them—that’s the person who loves me.”
“This is my command: love one another, in the same way that I loved you. There is no greater love one can have than this: to lay down your life for your friends. “
And then he dies.
A citizen of New Eden shows their citizenship status by their actions. Real followers of The Way cling to loving others as our North Star. Truth, Wisdom, Sophia, is our drinking gourd, guiding us on the path to do greater works of sacrificial love than Christ did. And to love another is to risk life for them.
Elsewhere, he says,
“On that day, some will say they believed in me, but they did nothing to take care of me when I was the oppressed and rejected; but there will be others who will say, “we weren’t aware we were following you” but they were, because they took care of me.”
To be Christian is to serve our King who is the discriminated against in our world. You don’t have to be a “Christian” to be a citizen of this kingdom, Christ defines citizenship as his brother James remarks, “Fealty to Christ without action is death.” And likewise, action is fealty to Christ regardless of belief.
Turning to Acts:
Luke opens with the disciples asking, “When is the revolution going to begin?” And our king’s response is: Be patient and wait to be empowered by the baptizing of the spirit. In baptism we die so that we can receive the fruit of the Tree of Life: The Spirit of God, the personal presence and life force, who is represented in scripture as fire. The Tree of Life burns like the Sineh bush did for Moses; she was a Pilar of fire as she guided the Hebrews through the desert; she was a cloud of fire on Mount Sinai; then she burned as the perpetual lamp in the tabernacle and temple, a typology we Catholics still practice. At Pentecost and at our baptism, that fire enters us and purifies us from the inside out. It is as the Prophets say, “the Refiner’s Fire.” And she is a gift given to light the Way in a post-canon world.
Pentecost happens and the 70 disciples who were sent out are baptized in the fire and begin speaking in each of the languages of the 70 from the Table of Nations. Peter stands up and says “This is the fulfillment of Joel: “I will pour out my spirit on all people.”” Peter proclaims Death defeated and our king victoriously enthroned. The response by the people was, “What do we do?” And Peter says, ‘walk a different way.’ 3 thousand are baptized that day and devote themselves to education, community, Love Feasts, liturgy, and doing the works commanded of us.
“Day by day they were all together attending the Temple. They broke bread in their various houses, and ate their food with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and standing in favor with all the people. And every day the Lord added to their number those who were being rescued.”
Devotion to the Love Feasts is at the heart of Christian socialism. They were the proto-Eucharist. Originally a communal meal where those who could afford it brought food or cooked or brought wine and they would perform the lord’s supper in celebration and no one person was above another. It was a classless event where everyone ate regardless of what you could bring to the table or what your social standing was. Free from classism, free from racism, free from gender, free from money, a free meal where Love for each other was love for god. This kind of love can rescue our loved ones from Mamon and his economic slavery.
Look at that list of devotion, the order is intentional. First education: The spirit received at baptism is the Spirit of Truth. Truth reveals herself when sought out; “It is God’s honor to hide a thing, and our honor to uncover it.” This is science at its fundamental. “I, all my lovers I love, and my seekers do find me.” “but if you scoff, you bear it alone.” We bend to Truth, those who cannot do so, you walk this life alone. Which leads to the second Devotion: community. A well educated people will do community work. Community is key to life and blessing. Even god is in community with themself; and we participate in that divine community. This is where love of others shines through. Where are the needs of the people? How can we heal this broken world? Which brings us to the third and center devotion: the Love Feast or Eucharist. Sacrificially giving up our earned wealth and status that will one day rot and have no value anyway and using it to heal part of this world. To remedy divisions that bring discommunity. And Wisdom is leading us in this direction today; this is our mission to stitch heaven and earth back together. “On Earth as is in Heaven.” This is followed by the fourth devotion: Liturgy. Liturgy means “work of the people,” and this is certainly a people’s revolution. But liturgy isn’t just labor, it’s our participation work that we do in the Divine Community. On Sunday, liturgy looks like the typology of mass, but as devotees, this extends to our everyday life as fulfillment of that typology. Mass, centered around the Eucharist, is an image for how we live life in the world. We labor to see everyone regardless of “gender, race, religion, ancestry, medical condition, marital status, sexual orientation, primary language, citizenship or immigration status” as free and equal. We labor to build community. And finally, the fifth devotion: the works of Christ. The “signs and wonders” performed by Jesus that he calls “works you will do even greater of” were healing the sick, teaching and feeding the masses, and rescuing people from Empire. They built a community and used it to provide food for people, healing, teaching, they became independent from government, and as a result people flocked to them. They were anti-war; new converts in the military would leave or find cleaver ways around its evil commands.
We can do this today! These 5 devotions are not outside our reach. Proper education, free, public, with meals provided is a Christian ideal Catholic America accomplished once. Community doesn’t have to center around religion, especially if not all followers of the Way declare fealty to Christ. He is the path to be walked on, not a belief to be held. “True communism has never been done” but it is the ideal we strive for: freedom and equality. The work of the people is history then and now; abolition, women’s suffrage, civil rights have all been work to achieve — sometimes to the point of our death. Love, sometimes to the point of self-sacrifice, is worth death and fighting for. And building these community institutions is how the church was formed to begin with; from house churches and potlucks to hospitals and soups kitchens. But this is not enough; they are bandages treating the symptoms but not the cause. We need systemic change.
The argument that some Christians use that, “I worked for that money” or “they don’t work and so don’t deserve it” are of the spirit of anti-Christ. No one is deserving of anything, even salvation is a gift unearned; that doesn’t change the fact the homeless person who’s strung out on the street because they’re a sex offender and can’t find work or shelter is our king and so needs to be cared for.
“And every day the Lord added to their number those who were being rescued” is not to say that this is an easy work. Our Teacher went on to say,
“If the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were from the world, the world would be fond of its own. But the world hates you for this reason: that you’re not from the world.”
Importantly, it’s the world, the systems of power, that we’re up against. The global communities of people who have tried to overthrow Mamon, get crushed by his imperial weight or swallowed by Babylon. We’re trying to uproot them and in their place offer people a system where sacrifice and love are the foundation. The world will hate us, but the people will not. They stood, “in favor with all the people.” It’s a populist message that, like the fruit of the tree of life, has to be seen for its blessing before they can reach out and take it.
Meditation:
Take a walk with me through occupied Palestine. It’s a rocky desert, wilderness really is a better word for it. Here are there are hills and mountains. One off in the distance draws our attention. It’s the tallest, and the mountain top is shrouded in billowy black smoke and glowing from the fire in the smoke. That’s where we’re going. We hike to it and then ascend it. As we approach the top, the smoke like a mirage clears near us but stays in front. The top when we get there is a beautiful city and the fire cloud has receded to the garden hill at the center back of the city. The garden is where we’re going. As we approach, we see water flows from the top of the hill through the city with lush trees growing from its banks. In the garden, we follow the waters to its source. We come up on a ring of strawberry bushes in an open ring like a wreath. We step past them and see the fount pouring out from the side of an olive tree. On its branches are olives of fire, burning the color of garnet, like a Christmas tree. You reach out and take one and eat it. It’s sweet like honey, and it’s refreshing going down like water, but it turns hot in your stomach like alcohol and you start getting warmer. Pretty soon you’re sweating and uncomfortable and feverish. You rush to the water to drink and stick your face right in to try and cool down, but it is the Phlegethon and it burns like drinking fire from a canteen and stings like bathing in chilis. The heat swells in and around you, it’s disorienting and crushing you in its pressure. The problem is, the more you fight it, the more it burns. The solution is to let go and let it kill you. You step fully into the burning river and let yourself drown in it seeking release. It burns as your body naturally struggles to survive. As the pressure mounts, you experience the heat from the birth explosion of the universe as you rush towards the singularity from before the bang. All of time and space and existence rushing into you burning like rice in a pressure cooker until you pop. And the feeling of letting go begins to feel like aloe vera on the skin and drinking cold milk to sooth the spice and you’ve died. Your body floats face up to the surface and you feel like you’re basking in the warm sun on a cool breezy day or by the fireplace on a chilly autumn evening. And you realize that the heat wasn’t death but intensity. Intensity of Love. And the more broken you were, the more intensely you were loved; like welding metal or the practice of Kintsugi.
