Pentecost preserves the
memory of Jesus and his teachings while on earth through the Holy Spirit who
restores and renews the breadth and depth of our faith through our love for one
another. God and Love cannot be contained and must be shared. God is love.
David Steindl-Rast
writes in Deeper than Words that The
Holy Spirit is the awe-inspiring power of life and love. We differ only by the
degree to which we open ourselves to this power. If we patiently cultivate
courage and openness, we will become more and more aware of the Spirit which
allows us to know God within.
In our Creed when we proclaim our belief in the Holy
Spirit, we acknowledge the Trinitarian God as the ‘Father,’ the ultimate mystery from whom we come and to whom we are
on our way; the ‘Son,’ in whom we
find our true Self; the ‘Spirit,’
the divine aliveness within our innermost life, Here we touch upon the very
core of faith.
We are charged with
remembering all that Jesus lived while he was with us. (John 20:19-23) The
Spirit is the ultimate power of the Gospel through which the Word becomes flesh in us, and are no longer
just words. We become those words and they define who and what we are. We
remember not as if it were yesterday but because it is today; we live the
memory now and again and again.
“When we remember, we
leave the present for the past. To say it better, we bring the past into the
present and give it life alongside the tangible realities we are compelled to
consider. Not physical presence but love leads us to live with this remembered
person even in his/her absence. When love is strong, the memory of this may be
even more dear and more real than the reality of those who are present. Our
memory of another confers the present upon him, gives him further life in our
life, and keeps a moment of the past from drifting away or fading into death.
“We are fed and nourished by communion of life in which our lives intersect in memory and merge into a common experience. No lover forgets. No beloved is forgotten. The memory of love is life; the memory of another becomes ourselves. So when the communion of believers remembers Jesus, Christ is present and is brought into the present with his grace by the power of the Spirit…The gift of the Spirit is fidelity to the memory of life’s mystery and confidence in the mystery of its future.” (Anthony Padovano, Dawn without Darkness)
When you're awake, the
things you think
Come from the dream you dream
Thought has wings, and lots of things
Are seldom what they seem
Sometimes you think you've lived before
All that you live to day
Things you do come back to you
As though they knew the way
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