News - May 2020 RSS Feed

This weekend, we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. Like all the rest of humanity, the people who were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write our scriptures used their unique ways of expressing how they experienced the Presence of the Divine in their lives. We are called to allow the Spirit dwelling within us since our creation to inspire us to hear what the Spirit wants us to grasp with our hearts as we reflect on what we read and listen to. Today we celebrate not so much that the Holy Spirit first became part of the peoples’ lives, but that they became aware of that Presence for the first time or in a very new way. The process that led to this blessed realization was their reflecting on and praying together about their experiences of Jesus when He was physically with them. We pray that as we celebrate this time of awakening for Jesus’ first followers, that we, too, would be awakened anew to the Presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. That we would allow the Spirit to energize us to work together with one another and the Spirit to transform our church and world into what God created them to be.

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This weekend we celebrate the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord. Our first reading says this event took place forty days after Easter Sunday. In stating this, Luke is capturing the rich symbolism of forty throughout the Bible. It signifies a time of preparing for something that will take complete focus on God’s love for all people as well as the accompanying privilege of making that love known in our everyday interactions with one another. Just as there are no limits to God’s love, so the mission of Jesus that we have all been asked and empowered to continue is to include the people of all nations. Are all people going to become followers of Jesus? That is up to the Holy Spirit. Our mission is to treat every human being with the same embracing love that Jesus made known in His time here on earth. Part of our role is to do our best in transforming our world so that every person is treated as a beloved person of God and that we find ways to take appropriate care of our common home as well.

As our journey through the Easter Season has us at the sixth of seven weeks of the season, this Sunday’s Gospel presents Jesus relating with His first followers and us in a very intimate way. However, included in that intimate, personal relationship are God our Creator as well as the Holy Spirit. How important it is to spend time regularly just being with this constant flow of love! How meaningful it is to do our best to grasp in mind, heart and soul what it means to be embraced by a love that knows no bounds and is ever constant. In our pondering, let us realize how treasured we are by the God who created us, by Jesus who revealed the Creator’s love for all people, and by the Holy Spirit who guides us in allowing that love to inspire our every action, decision and choice. What can we say in response but “THANK YOU!”

In reflecting on our first reading for this, the fifth Sunday of Easter, we notice how the early church solved a very important issue. Of course, the number of people who were part of the community at that time was quite small compared to the present population of the church. All the same, how can we today involve, if not all members at least more members, in being attentive to the Holy Spirit and pooling the wisdom of the faithful in determining the future vitality of the church. An example of this was the synod that Pope Francis called several years ago to see how the Holy Spirit might inform the church so that Eucharist could be provided for the millions of people in the Amazon who are not given that opportunity because of a shortage of priests. Unfortunately, some of the hoped for changes are still waiting to be implemented. On the other hand, there are many within the church who were dead set against any of those proposed changes. Tradition and dogma superseded finding a way to meet the real needs of deprived people.