Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.

tjc_Weeki Wachee Sunset

Deacon Tom Writes,

“Lord, Send out your Spirit,

and renew the face of the earth”

Pentecost Sunday, Mass during the Day,  Year C

On this Feast of Pentecost, we celebrate the birthday of our church. On this special day we pray to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, for whose help we are most in need. We pray for the Spirit of God to come into our lives and revive our hearts so we may know God’s presence at work within us and in our world, renewing us and filling us with his love.

This Pentecost we pray that the Spirit of Jesus Christ will awaken in us a desire to know God and to do his Will. Yet, we really don’t need to ask for this gift…. Jesus told us that he would send…“The Advocate, the Holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name -- will teach you everything and remind you of all that (I) told you” JN 14:26. Our need is to be open to receive this Spirit of God deep within the fiber of our being. We need the Holy Spirit so that we can meet the demands of Christian discipleship … that is to grow daily in the knowledge and love of God and in service to our brothers and sisters in Christ. It is the Holy Spirit who breathes into us the knowledge of God’s love so that we, in turn, can love and engender love in others as Jesus taught us. For indeed…“we have been given the manifestation of the spirit for some benefit”…. and that benefit is to realize God’s abundant love not only in ourselves, but in others also giving them the opportunity to discover God’s love for themselves.

Jesus sent his disciples into this world that hungered for the love, peace and rest from the toils and anxieties of life. And we still do! Can there really be any question about that as we witness the horrific suffering in our world, the political divisiveness, the economic disparity, and the hopelessness engendered by the degradation of the human spirit? We are in desperate need of the gifts of the Holy Spirit...wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge, fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord so that we can live together and realize our full potential as children of God. These gifts of the Spirit transform our lives and conform us so that we become Christ-like in every way. Too difficult?  Yes, for us left to ourselves, but not for Christ to accomplish in us. That is the transformative power of Holy Spirit this Pentecost for all who strive to be disciples of Christ today. As Christ sent his first disciples into the world to dispel the darkness and give it hope, he now sends us into the world so we can continue to be people of hope…. who forgive and love one another, who act justly and work for a justice in this world, who look forward to the fullness of God’s reign.  We, like those who have gone before us, have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit and, so empowered, are sent into the world to be witnesses of God’s love and to cooperated with his own Spirit so that together we can renew the face of the earth.

Enjoy the day

Deacon Tom

We're All In This Together!

Deacon Tom Writes,

“We Are All In This Together!”

Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year C

The words of today’s gospel challenge anyone attempting to live as disciples of Christ amid the disunity that troubles our world. Jesus finishes the last Passover meal he was to share with his friends before heading across the Kidron Valley to the Garden of Gethsemane. His final words spoke of his burning desire that  “they may all be one”. Jesus calls us to share the same unity with one another and with him as he has with the Father so that we may know, “…that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them”. Recall that when Jesus spoke these words he too was in the midst of a fractured world… Roman occupation, tension between the Jews and the Gentiles, slaves and free, rich and poor, religious leaders and the people they were supposed to shepherd.  Unity was far from the reality. 

Yet Jesus calls his followers to a different worldview… one of unity. Jesus’ last words emphasize that we live in God’s love just as Jesus lives in Father’s love. The Son of God calls us to a mutual love, loving him as he loves us. It is an invitation into this mutual love, a love that leads us into union with the Divine Godhead, the Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier – the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

With even the slightest awareness of this reality, we begin to see ourselves as one with God, united to him as children to their father. We all should be working as one big family seeking to remove all the barriers that divide us, that separate us from the love of God and each other. And so, as people so intimately united with one another through our mutual, loving relationship with God, we are called to surmount all the barriers to God’s love, the barriers of hatred and discrimination, the barriers of poverty and ignorance, the barriers that has one group thinking they are superior to another group. And, furthermore, we are called to shun all the voices calling us to disunity, factions, division. All these barriers attack the central reality of our faith – that we are made in the image and likeness of God and that we possess a dignity of person because of God’s love and indwelling in us.

God loves all his children, without exception and he calls us to be like him in this regard. Let our lives be spent living Jesus’ farewell prayer to his disciples by seeking to be one with him and with each other by reconciling our differences, by being moved with compassion in the face of suffering, bigotry, violence, and ignorance. In the face of the rampant divisiveness we witness today, do we dare pray with Jesus, “Holy Father… may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you”.  May the Almighty Father hear our prayers and give us the grace and courage to overcome our fears so we may live as true disciples of the Lord who prayed that” we all may be one”.

Happy Mothers’ Day to all our mothers, grandmothers, great grandmothers! May God bless on this special day and always and fill your day with his joy.

Enjoy the day!

Deacon Tom