Weekend Reflections for 6/2/17

"Pentecost 2017

Acts 2:1-11

    While often repeating the comfortable assurances of God's abiding love, the scripture also rises up to challenge us. Often it is like a mirror held up before us so that we might check how we really appear, not just how we imagine we are.  At Pentecost, the Bible scholars point out, the strong wind blowing everyone together out of all the nations, the sudden ability to understand the reaching in the one language of the Spirit, is the reverse of the curse of Babel. We become one Body, one Spirit in Christ.  That is our true nationality, our common mother tongue. The nation of our natural birth no longer can claim our first allegiance or our primary loyalty. "America First" can be a retreat away from our allegiance pledged at Baptism and testified to at Confirmation. We profess each Sunday our belief in and our allegiance to "one, holy, universal, and apostolic church".

    - Francis X. Ryan, SJ