Some years ago I remember celebrating the Vigil of Pentecost in Las Palmas, one of the famous hills of Valparaiso. It seemed like a good idea to take a brief look at other young Christian communities in the early history of the Church.

We looked at Antioch with its strong missionary community - the place where the followers of Christ were first called Christians. Then we looked at Corinth, a port like Valparaiso, with many of the same distractions and temptations, and after that at Jerusalem and Ephesus.

We asked where we might be going as a Christian community; what gifts did we have to share with the world around us? We searched the Acts of the Apostles and Paul's letters to the Corinthians for clues about our own path. As members of the Holy Family Community we searched prayerfully to see where the Holy Spirit might be leading us. I still have vivid memories of that night.

Last year in my new parish situation in Santiago, an all-night Pentecost vigil included periods of reflection and silence interlaced with action songs and dramas. This was a real challenge to the concentration of the young people who had committed themselves to participate in it.

Some years back, during the period of military dictatorship, there was an awareness of the need for strong social commitment. When we celebrated the sacrament of Confirmation, the youth were impressive, expressing their three-fold commitment to personal faith, to their own communities, and to faith and justice in their own localities.

Some of the young people that I accompanied in those days paid dearly for their commitment to justice: they had to confront authoritarian professors in institutes and universities and demand more transparency and equity in their work places where the Pinochet dictatorship had set a national model. Many have carried those convictions with them ever since. In the poorer areas where we Columbans work, it requires great strength of character to steer clear of drugs and organise their communities to keep local power-groups in check.

The cross was never left in the shadows during these Pentecost vigils. The role-plays highlighted family relationships; violence at the domestic and local level; problems of pornography, and the consumption of alcohol and drugs. These are huge challenges in each of our communities. Trying to give leadership and solving these issues really does demand a heroic level of commitment. I remember sitting through a discussion of verses from the Acts of the Apostles on the sharing of goods (2, 42-47; 4:32).

It seemed to demand just too much for many of those present. Then as the discussion progressed it became clear that some of those present really lived an extraordinary level of goodness and generosity.

So, back to that memorable celebration in June 2004, in the Tenants' Association building in Valparaiso. Through moulding images in clay, we had everybody involved in a practical and personal way of trying to decide how our young Christian Community would find its expression and its mission. There had been a moment of looking at the 'Lights and Shadows' in our neighbourhood. We gathered around a small bonfire in front of the building and spoke aloud our written statements of 'anti-values.' Then we fed them to the flames in the silence of the night.

There was a clear conviction that they themselves were the Church, and the image of a joined pair of clay hands signified the harmony and unity that only the Spirit brings.

We had begun by acknowledging that only those who dream are in a position to celebrate the coming of the Spirit. I remember clearly how we ended that memorable vigil with its sharing of prayer and vision and images. Each one laid hands on the shoulders of a neighbour in the fireside circle, and invoked a Spanish version of the Celtic Blessing on each other:

"May the grace of God rest on you;
may the grace of love rest on you;
may the Three be on your head,
the Three over your heart,
the Three cover your body;
may you pass each night and each day in the embrace of the Three,
every day of your life and always.

Amen."

Fr John McLaughlin first went to Chile as a diocesan Associate from the Archdiocese of Dublin in 1979, later joining the Columbans.