Happy Pentecost, friends! There are a great many folks in the Church who celebrate this feast day with great solemnity:   pulling out their red Sunday best, praying novenas, and celebrating with family. For others, it is just another Sunday, and that is a real shame, because devotion to the Holy Spirit is an essential ingredient in the life of a disciple.

One of the many reasons why we need to stay    in communication with the Holy Spirit is that       it is only through the movement of the Spirit that we are willing and able to take up the mission and ministries that God calls us to that we    might otherwise miss. In the ministry of the Apostles it is the endowment with the Spirit that transforms them from timid and fearful followers to bold leaders who are practically machines   designed to proclaim the Gospel to a world in need of it. How many of our number would find renewed purpose in evangelization, worship, and caring  for the poor if they called upon the Holy Spirit with more regularity?
 
A constant theme of the Holy Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles, as well as the Apostolic age of   the Church, is that those who are open to the call of the Spirit are made aware of a call that  they were previously blind to, and suddenly  finding themselves equipped to do the work   that the  Lord has set before them. In our own parishes there are many examples of the Spirit prompting people to take up work that they hadn’t considered. I suspect that all of the ordained staff and virtually everyone who volunteers in some ministry has had the  experience of finding themselves doing work  that their prior selves would have been stunned by. Whether it’s Deacon Steve finding himself working in prison ministry, or my own rocky road to Latino ministry, or even just Fr. Jeff finding himself working here in this region, we are all surprised by where the Spirit moves us.

We hear that the Holy Spirit tosses Jesus into the desert after His baptism, and now we find the Apostles proclaiming the Gospel in a multitude of languages to those who are seeking the Messiah. But if we aren’t attentive to the small ways that the Spirit wants to work in our lives, we will almost certainly miss the humongous ways. Not everyone gets knocked down by God on their  travels, but not everyone needs to be.
 
As we continue navigating the shifting sands of living as a parish region in the modern age, I am positive that more regular communication with the Holy Spirit will go a long way to transforming individual lives  and collectively transforming our parish community. Take time this week to invite the Spirit into every corner
of your life, and think about how you might make a habit of it. It might be intimidating to think of what the Spirit might call you to, but even the longest journeys start with a single step. Moreover, we can rest assured that God will not call us to anything that He will not also prepare   us to do. Come Holy Spirit, enkindle a fire within our parish!
 
Prayers always, Fr. McC