Reflections from Pentecost

Below are the wonderful reflections shared in the bulletin this past weekend for Pentecost!

In the Sprit of Communio – reflections for this Pentecost

May 23, 2010

These  submissions are unedited – in the text they were sent in to reflect the uniqueness of the people who submitted them.

A Taste of St. Malachi’s Second Annual Pentecost Fest!

Come, O Holy Spirit, come! And from your celestial home shed a ray of light divine! Come, O Holy Spirit, Come! Come, O Father of the poor! Come, O Source of all our store! Come, with in our bosoms shine! Come, O Holy Spirit, come!*

Forty-five St. Malachi Parishioners shared supper and Spirit last Wednesday. Cindy DiNardo, Rick Crow, Karen Duffy, Bobby Johansen, Terry Jungquist, Jack McLinden, Terry Laskey, Jim Pelikan, Linda Wilson, and Larry Sheehe talked about their own experience with Spirit. Each experienced the Spirit a little differently. Word, breathe, look into, adoration, quiet, service, hope, trust, decision, and inspire were only some of the words describing the experiences. The Holy Spirit was indeed a felt presence that evening. Some stories brought tears, some laughter, all brought encouragement and community. None experienced the Holy Spirit by themselves – it was from a relative, friend, or stranger… it was alone in a group… it was at home, at retreat, at St. Malachi’s Church, at Mass, at a funeral, at their job…. the most common prerequisite for each experience was that the person be open to the Spirit. Not easy, but worth working towards….

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. ( 1 Cor 12:4-7)

*Verse 1 of Come O Holy Spirit Come; Text: 77 77 D; fr.
The Pentecost Sequence, Veni, Sancte Spiritus, alt.;
Owen Alstott, b. 1947, ©1980,
OCP Publications. All rights reserved.
Thanks to Jackie Krejcik for submitting!

“And the earth was without form, and void, and the darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

Genesis 1:2

It’s just ten words into the Bible before we’ve got mystery, mystery older than both us and the earth we tread, and that’s precisely how much we humans love and need our mysteries, our miracles, our deja-vu’s, our incredible coincidences.  We hope to catch occasional glimpses past this world’s edges and wistfully call them premonition, intuition, hallucination.  Sometimes we want more form, to put  meat to our mysteries, so we create the sorts of beings found hiding in the dark corners of our varied human cultures and their myths: fairies, sprites, djinn, leprechauns, dryads, nymphs, and the entire array of spiritual energies unfairly lumped together under the disparaging label of “ghosts”.  It seems that there is something intrinsically human about our fascination with the supernatural, the paranormal, the unexplained and alien. We are drawn like insects to most anything lit from within by magic, catching ourselves wishing (as I have, as my children do) that Narnia and Hogwarts were really just an antique wardrobe or a hidden train station away, wishing puberty hadn’t destroyed Santa, wishing David Copperfield didn’t need trap doors.

This is why I’m drawn to the Spirit.  To me, God Almighty speaks through power, and Jesus Christ through love, and the Holy Spirit through mystery.  I picture the Spirit as the Special Operations Unit of the Trinity, delivering messages to humanity in the most unusual and memorable and creative of ways, from universal language capabilities to floating tongues of flame.  For instance, when I was mourning my dad, two years ago, I’m pretty sure it was the Spirit that gave Dad a hall pass one night to visit my dreams, where he sat next to me at a café table on a summer evening and cracked just one of his notoriously bad jokes, enough that I understood that everything was OK on his end.   I’m pretty sure it was the Spirit that convinced me to stamp out my flames, pick up the phone, and try again to ask my future wife out for a date, after she had politely but sincerely declined my first request.  And I know it was the Spirit that decided to speak to me one weekday morning, a few years ago, as I drove the Ohio Turnpike on my way to a business meeting, when I suddenly understood that God wanted me to help impoverished children, and even gave me an idea on how to go about it.  With some more patience on God’s end (for my slow implementation), and perhaps a future, remedial kick in the pants from the Spirit, it will happen.

Even now, a few years later, what still amazes me about that morning on the turnpike is how that vision just appeared, suddenly but naturally, as if the Spirit, with its equivalent of a sly smile or eye twinkle, planted this tiny alarm clock in me at conception and set it to go off at age 40, give or take a few months.  To me, it makes this world a much deeper and more wonderful place, just knowing that the Spirit is afoot, even as I write this, even as you read this, whispering to tens of thousands of minds and hearts, delivering such beautiful and memorable hauntings to those of us who aren’t even aware how much we need them.
submitted by Joe Kapitan

Prayer to the Holy Spirit
Come, Holy Spirit
Replace the tension in us with a holy relaxation.
Replace the turbulence within us with a sacred calm.
Replace the anxiety within us with a quiet confidence.
Replace the fear within us with a strong faith.
Replace the bitterness within us with the sweetness of grace.
Replace the coldness within us with a loving warmth.
Replace the night within us with Your light.
Replace the winter within us with Your spring.
Straighten our crookedness.
Fill our emptiness.
Dull the edge of our pride.
Sharpen the edge of our humility.
Light the fires of our love.
Quench the flames of our lust
Let us see ourselves as You see us,
That we may see You as You have promised,
And be fortunate according to Your word,
Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God. Amen.

From Mass on May 16 2010, Fr. Jim O’Donnell presider

The Breath of God

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the breath of God
on earth,
who keeps the Christ vision present
to souls yet in darkness,
gives life
even to hearts now blind.
Infuses energy
into spirits yet weary, isolated,
searching and confused.

The spirit has spoken
to the human heart
through the prophets
and gives new meaning
to the Word
throughout time.

Hildegard of Bingen, caught up in the Holy Spirit, wrote, “I am a feather on the
breath of God.” Conscious of the breath of God within us and around us, we can
with confidence set out on the road to God knowing that it may be rocky but that
it is at the same time well lit, brightly marked, wholly traversable because the
Holy Spirit makes the path with us. We have not been left alone. 

Joan Chittister, OSB
Excerpted from In Search of Belief (Liguori Publ.)
Reprinted with permission.