Your Mature Peace, Your Self-Awareness – Call You to Preach

The Good News for the Day, May 19, 2024

Pentecost  (62)

The evening of that first day of the week—the doors locked where the disciples were, for fear of Judeans—Jesus came and stood right there in the middle of them, addressing them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. His followers were glad to see the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I’m sending you.” And when Jesus had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the spirit of being different—the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive–they are forgiven them, and whose sins you let stand are left.” (John 20)

Pentecost is the most surprising and transformative moment in our lives – if we connect the dots. The peace of Christ, the forgiveness of sins, the sending from God – and the surprise!

The peace here is not the absence of anger. It is something positive. It comes because we are a reflective self. I accept my own shortcomings, my incompleteness, my failures in the past, my needs in the present, and my hope for the future. It is the fruit of prayer and contemplation, the product of failure and confession, being comfortable in my own skin, and knowing why – no longer questioning my own maturity.

Sins – the mature person realizes that the sins of childhood or adolescence are not the sins of an adult. An adult can commit cultural sins by joining (committing to) or denying, by practicing my superiority and inequality that I am part of,, baseless anger, exaggerations or silences based on fear, addictions to this or that – things that only a truly reflective adult can discover in ourselves.

The third element Is the surprise not only that we can be at peace with God and ourselves, that we can deal with our sinfulness in a mature way – but that, surprisingly, we are called to change the lives of others.

It is not that we go out, self-importantly. It is that we listen and love. It is not that we preach at people with a different language, but that we communicate with our hearts. We preach by forgiving, by listening hard enough to understand, by being part of a larger group of like-minded spiritual people, by being mindful – especially mindful of the hidden side of all of us, the mystery which others present, and which we are, often, to ourselves.

Sunday, May 19, 2024

Pentecost Sunday

Your Mature Peace, Your Self-Awareness – Call You to Preach

The clamor and the flame perhaps weren’t seen

But what they finally felt, these gathered friends

Accepting who they are – and what they mean –

This soft eruption of a group which tends

To walk a public way against the tide

Of apathy and ignorance, become a lover

Whose truth is more than self – is bond beside

One’s betters – those with spirit – not a cover

For self deceit, but grown mature and wise –

With care the core which welcomes enemies

And friends as what is more than human eyes

Or moment can infer. Yes, They are keys

To kingdoms, far horizons and far shores –

You’re now a Pentecost, you open doors!