I hadn’t heard of this before, but it sounds quite wonderful.

From St John’s Lutheran Church in Lewistown, USA “Serving Christ and the Community since 1796”:

The Dark Ages, from about the fifth century to the beginning of the eleventh century, was a time of cultural bleakness, after Rome had been sacked and its empire destroyed. It was essentially a six hundred year Great Depression, when food was scarce, people lived hand-to-mouth, and Western Civilization barely hung by a thread. The one bright spot in the culture was the local cathedral, which was like a church-sponsored works project, reminiscent of those of FDR during our own Great Depression. The work gave thousands of people jobs, and the cathedrals, which were built even in small towns, became the cultural, social and spiritual centers of life. Ironically, it was these Dark Ages that produced some of the most beautiful murals, sculpture, stained-glass windows, and pageantry, which, in a time of great illiteracy, helped to teach the stories of the faith.

The cathedrals were centers of community life, the court-house for local lawmakers, a place where travelers could find a meal and safe lodging. On the outside, booths selling everything from flowers to sausage surrounded the cathedral, as they do in most European cities even today. The presence of a large, busy cathedral in the center of a village guaranteed a relatively stable economic base, and was the center of life for most people.

Pentecost was one of the great holidays celebrated in these cathedrals. In fact, many of them were built with special consideration for this great festival. The great domed and vaulted ceilings, so richly painted, disguised a number of trap doors that were used expressly for Pentecost celebrations. During worship, some hapless parishioners would be drafted to climb up on the roof. At the appropriate moment during the liturgy, they would release live doves through the trap doors, through the painted skies and clouds of the cathedral ceiling. These doves would come swooping down on the congregation as living symbols of the presence of the Holy Spirit. At the same moment, the choirboys were encouraged to make whooshing and drumming sounds, like a holy windstorm. Then, finally, as the doves swooped and the winds rose, the trap doors were again opened, and bushels of rose petals were showered upon the congregation, symbolizing tongues of flame falling upon the faithful below.

The holes through which this was done were called, “Holy Spirit holes.” You can image the wonder and delight that an event like that would bring into the hard, drab lives of those medieval Christians!

Today, we don’t have any holes in the ceiling like that. I suppose if we did something like that today, we’d have to use a laser display and some special audio-visual effects – a little “smoke and mirrors.” It still would not create the same kind of impression – people are so used to having exciting entertainment experiences. Yet today, I think we need “Holy Spirit holes” more than ever. Not the kind that serve as props for a medieval worship experience, but openings and conduits through which God’s Spirit can enter, permeate and revitalize people who are caught up in this violent, narcissistic, hedonistic, materialistic-oriented culture. We need Christians to serve as “Holy Spirit holes” – witnessing to the power of God’s love in this world. We need Christians who are willing to be conduits of God’s grace in a graceless world.

Read the full article here