Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, Corpus Christi (Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ).  One feast after another, like a step-by-step formula for what God intends for us, who, like the disciples after the Ascension, no longer can see Jesus in His earthly body:  (1) Let the Spirit in, (2) Live mindful of our intimate connection with our Triune God and (3) Receive, become and know what we are:  the Body of Christ.

Let the Spirit In

Let the Spirit enter into you.  Stop dead in your tracks and breathe in the Spirit. Let God’s Spirit take root in the deepest recesses of your being.

The roses are in bloom. Who made the roses whose beauty comes before us each year? What are they here for but if not to turn our hearts toward the beauty and Otherness of the Creator who made the rose, who gifted us with receptors (bodily sensors for seeing, for smelling) to drink in their beauty, their scent. 

There is a three-ness to the yearly coming forth of the flower: God, us and the flower. It is a Triune process like so many that impact ourselves and the whole of the created world. There is a Trinity at work in everything around us – in everything we experience, in everything we think, feel, say and do (or fail to think, feel, say and do). I and what is around me can be perceived by me as just two unconnected entities. That’s what a person in a self-centered culture perceives. But from the perspective of the Triune God, might I, each created entity and God have a deep meaningful, purposeful Triune interconnectedness? Why are we here? What is going on through us, with us, in us and between us?

Live Mindful of Your Intimate Connection with the Triune God

In so doing, we allow our Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to heal our wounds, remove our feelings of inadequacy and, like the disciples on Pentecost, let ourselves experience the awesomeness of God and the created.

And there is more. God is so good to us!

Receive, become and proclaim the Body of Christ

Receive and be one with the Body of Christ, now with us in a new way.  When we come to church this weekend, we will once again take and eat the Body of Christ.  Like the disciples on Pentecost, may we be open to receive Jesus, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity.  Let His Spirit heal and transform us. And then, like the disciples, go out into our everyday lives, no longer as the ones who entered the church an hour before, but as more genuine, God-transformed persons.  May we be present enough to let God in. (God respects us and waits for us to choose or ignore.) And when we do choose and are sent forth from the church, may we let God’s goodness and love flow into the lives of the people we meet.

Conclusion 

In these four feasts, Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, Corpus Christi (Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ), we get a refresher course in what should matter most to us:  Our Reality in God, our Reality through God, our Reality with God – once seen here with human eyes, now seen as we look at ourselves and each other, especially when we are together at Mass, with the eyes of our faith. Oh, the wonder and the mystery of God’s willingness to share God’s very Life with us!

This year, as we celebrate these feasts, let’s stop to find Joy in what’s happening around and within us:

• joy in seeing the roses in bloom, and joy in remembering the presence and relatedness of the One who made them,
• joy in the touch of the summer breeze, and joy in our taking moments to breathe in the Holy Spirit, our Intimate Connection with the Triune God, and
• joy in receiving, becoming and proclaiming our deep joy for being a part of the Body of Christ.

Sister Loretta

Post Image is an artist’s depiction of a scene from the Pentecost. It appears in the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, MO.  CNS photo /Crosiers