You send forth your Spirit, and they are created;
And so you renew the face of the earth. (Psalm 104)

THE HOLY SPIRIT IGNITES BOTH DISCIPLESHIP (WITNESSING) (JOHN 20) AND CREATES COMMUNITY. (ACTS)

The Risen Lord enters the Upper Room filled with fearful disciples.  He breathes upon them, as God had breathed upon the chaotic waters, transforming them into dynamic apostles witnessing to the ends of the earth. (John 20)  The risen Lord defied the disciples’ locked hearts, their locked minds, and their locked rooms. Again and again, he came to them startling them and empowering them with the Holy Spirit, and sending (commissioning) them to embody His love for the entire world.

That same Spirit drenched with fire and breath a multitude of people from  different communities of people on the day of Pentecost transforming them into one community (the Body of Christ) of the faithful. (Acts 2: 1-21)  They have become a body enlivened by the Spirit. A Spirit that moved them to reconciliation rather than hatred and misunderstanding. They were filled with dreams and visions of a better world – a world in which there would be love, forgiveness and service – a world of economic sharing and justice. They respond to Jesus’ blessing by becoming his body in the world.

PENTECOST BECKONS US TO KEEP BREATHING

“The celebration of Pentecost beckons us to keep breathing. It challenges us to keep ourselves open to the Spirit  who seeks us. The Spirit that, in the beginning, brooded over the chaos and brought forth creation; the Spirit that drenched the community with fire and breath on the day of Pentecost; this same Spirit desires to dwell within us and among us. Amidst the brokenness and chaos and pain that sometimes come with being in community, the Spirit searches for places to breathe in us, to transform us, to knit us together more deeply and wholly as the body of Christ, and to send us forth into the world.”   (Jan Richardson, The Painted Prayerbook)

In our Baptism we embrace the new life of the Holy Spirit. In our Baptism we renounce our false sources of life and commit ourselves to the wind of God ever blowing, creating, making new, and restoring life. Jan Richardson writes:

THE HOLY SPIRIT IS THE “INSIDES” OF BOTH JESUS AND THE FATHER. “THE SPIRIT IS THE LOVE THEY HAVE FOR EACH OTHER, THE CLOSENESS, THE GREAT SHARING.” ( Fr. John Foley, S.J.)  THE GREAT SHARING OF LOVE THEY WISH US TO WITNESS TO THROUGHOUT ALL AREAS OF OUR LIFE. John Kavanaugh writes:

What a wonder it would be, what a breeze of life, what a fire of zeal, if differences in the church were marked by these gifts of Pentecost. Rather than all our particular ideologies, our special interests, our private fixations, we would communicate to the world … in a language that we all understand. It is the language of the Holy Spirit, the language of love, revealed in patience and kindness, generosity and trust, and a faith both forgiving and enduring.”

MAY WE KEEP BREATHING. MAY WE BLAZE!