A Little Way

Dear Friend,

In the garden this morning it was like the birds were performing their own Hallelujah Chorus. I went to the window to hear it - waves of chirping, pitches, rhythms hurled together, even the voice (nearly muffled) of a mourning dove! A triumphant “dawn chorus” like I’d never heard before. Who knew what bird breath could do, I thought, and here I am supposedly writing about Pentecost when we receive the very breath of God! 

Bishop Szkredka was here for Confirmations two weeks ago and it was like a Pentecost preview. “Be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit,” he said to those he anointed, and then, in the words of Jesus: “Peace be with you.” In his homily a few minutes before, he’d recounted the story of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux as a young girl and the Christmas dinner (and her tantrum) that marked a turning point in her life. Pious, she was also volatile and overly sensitive. According to her autobiography, her father says something that annoys her, and she runs upstairs to her room. There’s a brief exchange with her sister and Thérèse makes her decision. She puts a smile on her face and goes back downstairs. “Jesus had changed me,” she writes, “love filled my heart.” It was “the grace of emerging from childhood.”

That Christmas day in 1886 was a new day, a moment of waking and emerging. Pentecost 2024 will be a new day, too, and the choir (with the birds) will voice it. Jesus enters a room - a world filled with sin, division, and fear - and he opens a path, call it a little way. We stand up and walk it, made new. We’re back in a garden and sent, this time with joy!

Gratefully,

Father Dan OFM, Pastor