It is our custom to select
cards with the fruits and gifts of the Spirit on Pentecost to serve as a
reminder of what we already possess as baptized individuals into the one body
of Christ.
Just
as this watercolor of the outpouring graces of the Holy Spirit washes across
this one piece of paper so too is our community awashed with graces. Yet, when the one piece of paper is divided
into many cards, each individual card, though unique with its flowing design,
is still of one piece. We are like that:
all connected yet having our own special gifts and talents to offer in service to our
community and to our world.
When
I was painting this watercolor I was humming a song I heard from a cassette tape
made by the St. Alphonsus ‘Rock’ Church
in St. Louis, ‘Spirit, Fall On Me,’ imagining the graces falling down upon us all like
a waterfall - imagine Niagara Falls - with plentiful water, refreshing
water. That is God’s way with graces –
showering on us plentiful Redemption.
At the bottom of the
waterfall are ripples pushing out further and further ever expanding from the base of the waterfall to affect everything around it. We are
those ripples when we use those graces that have fallen on us for the benefit of
all.
As we receive the fruits and
gifts of the Holy Spirit may we be refreshed by the plentiful graces falling on us by the powerful, joyful out-pouring of the Spirit upon us individually and as a community and ripple-out those graces to the entire world.
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