PENTECOST WATERFALL

 

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 awash 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 all with 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 all around us by the powerful, joyful out-pouring of the Spirit upon us individually, as a community and ripple-out those graces to the entire world.