“Come Holy Spirit” Prayer
Come, Holy Spirit Fill the Hearts of Your Faithful And Kindle Them the Fire of Your Love Send Forth Your Spirit and They Shall Be Created And You Shall Renew the Face of the Earth !
O God, Who by the Light of the Holy Spirit, Did Instruct the Hearts of the Faithful Grant That by the Same Holy Spirit We May Be Truly Wise
It has been a while since we have written, it has been a while since we were together and much has happened to the world ! Everywhere we look people are having to adapt and adjust to life in the grip of a global pandemic. While we may not be able to worship together, or to play together, or even to work together, our communities have become quite resilient and are finding ways to mingle and commune. Sometimes digitally or virtually while others have found time to foster their familial relationships once again. This might be a blessing in disguise. The rapid fire life of pre Corona has had many people on a fast track to their very own isolation and for what?
There are so many good things happening right now (if we choose to look) but I’d like to focus on highlighting two of them. One came when our Holy Father Pope Francis offered us an extra ordinary “Urbi et Orbi message in an empty St Peters before Easter, when referencing the storm in which the disciples became scared. He said, “The storm exposes our vulnerability and uncovers those false and superfluous certainties around which we have constructed our daily schedules, our projects, our habits, and priorities. It shows us how we have allowed to become dull and feeble the very things that nourish, sustain and strengthen our lives and our communities. The tempest lays bare all our prepackaged ideas and forgetfulness of what nourishes our people’s souls; all those attempts that anesthetize us with ways of thinking and acting that supposedly “save” us, but instead prove incapable of putting us in touch with our roots and keeping alive the memory of those who have gone before us. We deprive ourselves of the antibodies we need to confront adversity. In this storm, the façade of those stereotypes with which we camouflaged our egos, always worrying about our image, has fallen away, uncovering once more that (blessed) common belonging, of which we cannot be deprived: our belonging as brothers and sisters.
The other is simply from the Psalmist in our weekly night prayer of the Church, from Psalm 95, “You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the plague that prowls in the darkness, nor the scourge that lays waste at noon…Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place—the Most High, who is my refuge—no evil shall be allowed to befall you, no plague come near your tent”
I’m not suggesting for one minute that the many that have been lost to the virus were not believers or were being in some way punished. I am simply trying to fix my eyes on Him and reclaim the basic tenets of our faith. This place, this time, this body is temporal but we are promised something so much greater, so much more enduring, We have been promised a full inheritance in eternal life with Him, a state of utter satisfaction, a place where we can truly rest, where we can be fulfilled, content, satiated, if we only had eyes to see.
At least now we get a chance to put our spiritual eyes back on. A time to be home with our families, to consider the poor and the needy, to look in on our neighbors. We get to reset our prayer lives, our priorities, our response to the Lord. Even the planet is beginning to repair itself with fewer carbon emissions, clearer skies, clearer waters, wildlife is beginning to thrive in places it has not been seen for some time. This is a strange time but it is also a time to renew our commitments as brothers and sisters, a time to reclaim our faith and to choose Him above and beyond all other people, places and things. Let us keep our eyes on Jesus.
In many ways everything has changed and in some ways, nothing has changed. Jesus is the same, yesterday, today and forever. We are still called to love Him and to love one another, we are still called to follow Him, to trust in Him and to have hope in Him. We are still called to be holy! Our resurrected Lord now prepares us once again to receive The Holy Spirit and if we desire to be faithful to this calling, we need His gifts now more than ever. Come Lord Jesus, Send Forth Your Spirit and They Shall Be Created And You Shall Renew the Face of the Earth !
AMEN !