May 24, 2026 Whitsunday (Pentecost)

May 24, 2026

Whitsunday

(Pentecost)

You have probably heard about the “Nones.” It’s a term used by organizations such as the Pew Research Center for people who describe themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” when surveyed about their present religion, if any. Religion? None.

Further questions on these surveys often reveal that many Nones are not necessarily hostile against organized religion. Some even describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” which implies they may have an inner hunger for connection with something or someone higher than themselves.

But lately, surveyors have identified a subgroup of the Nones they are calling the “Dones.” The term suggests that some in this cohort may have had a passing involvement with religion or spirituality, but now they are done with all of that, done with religion, and done with spirituality apart from religion. The Dones sweep in about a third of non-religious Americans. What is unique about these folks is that they don’t express any yearning for God or someone higher than themselves at all.

Others in this subgroup have never had a connection with religion or spirituality, and they don’t miss it. As Ryan Burge, who published a study about Dones, bluntly puts it, “When we say that the Dones are done, we mean it. And it’s not that they have walked away from organized religion. They aren’t too keen on spirituality either. It’s like they just don’t have a God-shaped hole that needs filling. The Dones don’t yearn.”

The term “God-shaped hole” is sometimes attributed to Blaise Pascal, a 17th-century French mathematician and philosopher, although there is no record of him using the term. He did, however, write about that general idea in his book, Pensées, where he noted that mortals have a craving for God “that he tries in vain to fill with everything around him.” But the God-shaped hole has become modern shorthand for the inner restlessness some people feel — a hole that preachers like to say can only be filled by God.

Whether or not Pascal originated the term in the 17th century, what it describes was not a new idea even then, for we find essentially the same thought in the writings of Saint Augustine, who was born in the 4th century. He prayed, “I call you into my soul, which you prepare to accept you by the longing that you breathe into it.” He also said, “Our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” Scholars of Saint Augustine point out that he used the word “heart” in its singular form, which they see as referring to the collective heart and hunger of humankind, rather than simply the hunger of a single individual. So, the idea is that he viewed all people as having that hunger.

Now, however, we are hearing about the Dones, who do not seem to fit that assumption. Statistically, about one in 10 Americans has nothing to do with religion and has no interest in changing that. What’s more, many of the Dones are people who have experienced this a significant portion of life. According to the survey, about half of them are at least 55 years old and a third are older than 65.

But hold that thought for a moment.

Today is Whitsunday, or Pentecost in its modern usage, commonly considered the day the church was born. The focus of the Acts text is on the action of God, via the Holy Spirit, on the followers of Jesus. Through them, the crowd ends up being remarkably receptive to the message. In verse 21, Peter quotes Joel from the Hebrew Bible to tell his hearers that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, and many who hear do so. We can rightly assume that those who did respond had an awareness of spiritual yearning awakened by God’s Spirit as Peter spoke, at least in that moment. If there were any Dones in the Pentecost crowd, it’s likely they drifted off, uninterested in what Peter had to say, not even waiting for the Holy Spirit to show up.

But if there is one thing Pentecost teaches, it is that God is not limited to one human gateway — yearning — to reach us where it matters.

We mortals have several gateways through which the Holy Spirit can reach our innermost being. For example, C. S. Lewis, who was one of the most influential Christian writers of the 20th century, described his conversion to Christianity in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy. The chapter in which he discussed this conversion is titled “Checkmate.” It is an appropriate label for his conversion, for Lewis, who was a great thinker, and an atheist. The reason for his disbelief in God was because the traditional arguments for the existence of God, and the claims of the Christian church simply were not convincing to him.

But as time went on and Lewis continued reading and thinking, he discovered that his arguments against the existence of God became harder to defend intellectually than the arguments in favor of God’s existence. Lewis came to view the gradual destruction of his objection to God and the Christian faith as moves by God to bring him to a place of intellectual checkmate. The Holy Spirit used the very thinking processes that Lewis valued so highly to break down his resistance to God’s claim on his life.

Lewis’ conversion occurred primarily through the intellectual gateway. To be sure, it was soon followed by the other aspects of his life being brought on board, but the mental gate was the first point of entry for God’s Spirit into Lewis’ life.

We can also think of the number of people whose first encounter with God’s Spirit is through their emotions — maybe through a spiritual high, experienced as a young person at a church camp, or later in a revival meeting. Feelings can be fleeting, and an emotional surrender to God, if it is to last, needs to be bolstered by commitments in other areas. These include intellectual and social relationships, but for many, emotions allow the inner security system against the call of God to be temporarily breached. Feelings can be a gateway for God to enter our hearts.

The Holy Spirit can also enter our lives through our conscience, our relationships with others, painful or joyous moments in our lives, our choices, sudden revelations, and so on.

The story of Pentecost is that the Spirit of God is not limited by human barriers — and that includes the skeptical outlook of the Nones and the uninterested position of the Dones.

Let’s come back to the yearning-for-God gateway. While the Dones may not currently yearn for God, that’s not to say none of them ever will. Consider the case of Malcolm Muggeridge, who died in 1990 at the age of 87. He was a British journalist and satirist, and an atheist for most of his life. Muggeridge likened his attitude toward faith to a gargoyle on the top of a cathedral — looking down, grinning and laughing at the absurd behavior, the vain strivings, of [people] on earth. Muggeridge examined religion and faith with the eyes of a journalist, from the outside — looking down, like the gargoyle, without venturing in to meet the faithful on their own terms.

But in his mid-60s, Muggeridge was assigned to make a documentary about Mother Teresa and her work with the poor in Calcutta. He spent time with her, which he described as an encounter with a powerful and inspiring example of Christian love and faith in action. That experience helped him realize the emptiness of the cynicism that had been his outlook for so long. It also awakened in him what he called a “longing for God.” In his book about Mother Teresa, Something Beautiful for God, he wrote, “Christ is longing to be your food. Surrounded by the fullness of the living God, you allow yourself to starve. Christ has created you because he wants you.”

Anne Rice, the author of several vampire novels, is a more recent example. She died in 2021 at age 80. She, too, was an atheist for much of her adult life. But in her late 50s, she became aware of something happening inside her. She says, “I became convinced that I was being pursued by the Lord. I did not think literally, ‘He is pursuing me.’ After all, he wasn’t supposed to exist. He was supposed to be an idea. He was ‘located’ in nostalgia. I thought something is pursuing me. Something is happening.”

Eventually, she realized that it was indeed God who was pursuing her, specifically in the person of Jesus. She realized that the growing discontent inside her was because she had become, as she called it, “Christ haunted.” And she found herself recalling a poem that had been a favorite of her father. It was by Francis Thompson and titled “The Hound of Heaven.” It pictures God as one who hounds us and keeps pursuing us despite our efforts to ignore or lose him — as one who continues after us with the relentlessness of a hound that pursues its prey.

Rice eventually said yes to the Divine Pursuer, and though she went back to the Catholic Church of her youth, she called it a “conversion.”

To complete her story, we note that Rice later broke with organized Christianity as represented by the Catholic Church, largely because her social views were considerably more liberal than those of her church. But as she explained in an interview: “My commitment to Christ remains at the heart and center of my life.”

Pentecost, it seems, has not been confined to the first century, but continues today, through God-shaped holes and other means. It continues in many a people, young and old, in whom the Holy Spirit decides to enter the hole of our souls.

Let us pray.

On this great feast of Whitsunday, when we celebrate Christ’s wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit, we humbly beseech our Father that we be blessed and inspired by that same Spirit, so that we may grow in wisdom and love of God and neighbor. We pray to the Lord.               

We pray for our church and the church throughout the world, that we will be open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit as we seek renewal and the true way forward together. We pray to the Lord               

We ask the Holy Spirit to bestow on us the wisdom and insight to care for the earth and environment and to preserve God’s gifts of water, land and climate for ourselves and for the good of those who come after us. We pray to the Lord.            

We pray for peace in the world, and particularly in the Holy Land, the Middle East and Ukraine, that the Holy Spirit reveals to all the futility of war and creates a desire for peace in the hearts of all men. We pray to the Lord.   

We pray for the faithful of the Islamic Center of San Diego, that the God who is the same of our faiths, will be especially close with their community during this horrible tragedy and that all of humanity become more tolerant and loving of the many races and religious faiths throughout the world. For all to realize that when acts of hate are committed against one, it is committed against us all. We pray to the lord. 

For all of earth’s people ravaged by war and violence. May every nation on earth discover the dignity of human life. May we lay down destructive weapons and divisive words that harm humankind. We pray to the Lord.

For those who have served our country whom we remember on Memorial Day weekend. For those who lost their lives in defending our country. For the families who survived them and mourned them. We pray to the Lord.

We pray for an increase of priests, deacons and religious. We pray to the Lord.

We pray that those with generous hearts may be led to our small church and give generously to our mission so that we may continue to be a church open to all peoples . We pray to the Lord.

For those on our parish prayer list, that they may receive swift answers to their needs and that they may find consolation through Christ’s healing presence. We pray to the Lord.

We bow our heads and remember in silence our own personal intentions and the intentions of those who have asked for our prayers (pause). We pray to the Lord.

Father God, please be with our community for the sin of hate, intolerance, and racism. As a people, we carry some of the dislike that was part of Cain and Abel near the beginning of time. We have lived our entire existence in such horrible state of thinking. We kill and maim with such ease, that it should shake us to the core and yet we are slowly becoming so indifferent, that these acts seem to be on an increase. Shape our hearts that we wake up from this so that we have a safer and familial earth.

Bless those who lost loved ones in the Islamic family this past week. We also pay homage to those of our country have lost loved ones in our American armed forces who give their lives in protection and service of our country. May their families be especially comforted your Holy Spirit on this Whitsunday, O Lord and may they know that many of us join them in their loss as we express great thanks for their loved ones who died to keep the rest of us safe.

O Lord, may your Holy Spirit come to us this day and give us peace, hope, and faith in you. We ask all these things, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

God Love You +++

The Most Rev. Robert Winzens

Pastor – St. Francis Chapel

San Diego, CA.

As a small parish, we come to you all as beggars! Share with us this Christmas, a little sacrifice for the Christ Child. Your generous support also allows us to continue these important projects that fuel the movement of progressive Christianity. Thank you and God bless you! +++

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