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How Do I?

Fr. Tom’s Letters

 

Each week Fr. Tom writes a letter to parishioners in our bulletin.  Every letter is comprehensive, including current information about the Parish, an explanation of Scripture for that Sunday, and an invitation to become more engaged in the life of the parish.

 

 

 

 

May 19,  2024

Dear Parishioners,

Today we gather to celebrate the Solemnity of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit. Our images of the Holy Spirit are many. A favorite image of the Holy Spirit is the dove; clearly depicted in our church’s stained glass window representation of the first Pentecost. Other suggest the image of wind, suggesting movement, power. The Holy Spirit is represented in such diverse images as water and fire.

My favorite image of the Holy Spirit is the image provided in today’s gospel. I understand the Holy Spirit as the very life breath of God, shared with the Apostles in the upper room by the Risen Lord as we are told he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

As today brings to a conclusion the fifty days of the Easter Season, what is important is that the Church and each of us opens ourselves to the gift and presence of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit “co-equal with the Father and Son,” who is with us as we begin again the Church weeks of Ordinary Time that carry us through the remaining weeks of spring, the full summer, and most of the fall until we begin a new liturgical year with the First Sunday of Advent on December 1st.

It is the Holy Spirit who offers us his guidance and inspiration as we make important choices and decisions. It is the Holy Spirit who calls us to truth when we experience confusion. It is the Holy Spirit who reminds us of charity and love when we are tempted to self-centeredness and hurtful anger. It is the Holy Spirit who offers us his company and strength when we experience weakness and temptation.

One of our responsibilities is to listen for the Holy Spirit. This listening is for the entire Church, our whole parish as we seek to follow closely the gospel in an increasingly secular and non-Christian culture. We listen to the Holy Spirit as individuals as we seek to meet the challenges of our individual lives. The Holy Spirit will help us to live more lovingly the responsibilities of married life. The Holy Spirit will show us the way of bringing charity to our relationships with family members, relatives, friends, and neighbors. The Holy Spirit will bring us courage, insight, patience, endurance as we deal with difficult circumstances that are new to us.

I think in our childhoods, some of us may have gotten the idea that in some way the Holy Spirit is truly a “third person,” somehow of lesser importance, of lesser rank than the Father and the Son. Jesus makes clear that such is not the case. The Holy Spirit is fully a person of the Holy Trinity.

As we complete this last week of the Easter season, the Church provided some beautiful readings about the Holy Spirit. Among these words, are the very dramatic and mysterious words of St. Basil the Great: “Through the Spirit we become citizens of heaven, we are admitted to the company of angels, we enter into eternal happiness, and abide in God. Through the Spirit we acquire a likeness to God; indeed, we attain what is beyond our most sublime aspirations – we become God,”

In his Pentecost homily 2023, Pope Francis concluded: “Come, Creator Spirit, harmony of humanity, renew the face of the earth. Come Gift of gifts, harmony of the Church, make us one in you. Come, Spirit of forgiveness and harmony of the heart, transform us as only you can, through the intercession of Mary.”

Happy Pentecost!

Fr. Tom