Love is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. On this Pentecost Day my prayer is that I open my heart to hold more love, joy, patience… all of the beautiful gifts of the Spirit (Read Galatians 5:16-25 one of the optional readings for Pentecost Sunday). It’s been a week that has challenged those fruits in me. I have thought about what I wanted to write all week but I wanted it to be written in a spirit of love, real love, which is “willing the good of the other”.

I read the reflection in Give Us This Day for today’s Solemnity written by Carolyn Woo, CEO/Catholic Relief Services and dean of the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame and was especially moved by these three sentences regarding the apostles experience of Pentecost: “Their proclamation enveloped all in a spirit of love, belonging and oneness. What the people heard and understood was not just some breaking news of the day, a good chat, or rules for success. What they heard was the ‘mighty acts of God’-magnificent creation that included themselves, covenant love that is never broken, forgiveness, redemption, and ultimately reunion with God.”

So why have I been wrestling with my thoughts for today? I am having a difficult time because I want to respond to a limited view of Catholicism shared this week in a commencement address by Harrison Butker at Benedictine College and then debated widely in the news and in social media. I have seen more dissension and vitriol in social media than I can tolerate (and we still have an election coming up this November, I might have to fast from social media!). Initially I found myself responding with disdain rather than wanting to understand all that was included in the address. Once I stepped back, read the address, taking in all the reactions, positive and negative, I pondered when and how it got this bad, that every statement someone makes requires a personal rebuttal, nasty comment, sarcastic meme or hateful statement. Then gospel readings of vocal outbursts between the righteous Pharisees and Saducees came to mind. So maybe the reactions have always been there but are just more noticeable in the constant news and social media frenzy we live with.

I do not object to any person’s freedom of speech and opinion. I did wonder if the college that invited the speaker didn’t have a hidden agenda and expect the attention and backlash that it would cause. I was shocked, however, when the Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica, in their response, as the founding institution and a sponsor of the College, received so many argumentative comments to their letter. I find it interesting that people who say they are open to discussion and debate hurl condescending responses when the opinion is different than their own. Is it no longer possible to disagree and turn away?

I am thankful for the many articles written in support of the Benedictine and Christian values that I believe in. I stand in complete solidarity with the Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica and their statement that they are “faithful members of the Catholic Church who embrace and promote the values of the Gospel, St. Benedict, and Vatican II and the teachings of Pope Francis.”

I also listened to Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermon on YouTube this morning regarding this solemn Feast we celebrate today. Bishop Barron contemplated each of the fruits of the Holy Spirit outlined in the Galatians reading. I would highly recommend listening to it. But one comment stands out, “Love stands at the center of the Church’s life, because that’s what the Holy Spirit is.” In speaking of the fruits of the Spirit, Bishop Barron suggests to pay attention to those things in life, vocations and activities, that give rise to the fruits, and stay close to those. If they don’t, if they bring up the opposite of those, stay away.

In no way am I saying that I take Bishop’s sermon as a validation of my feelings or the “truth” regarding my reaction to the commencement address or the response by the Benedictine Sisters. That answer is for people wiser than me. What I do hear, for me, in a spirit of discernment, is to stay away from the dissension, draw close to things that bring about more love, more joy, more patience. Going back to Carolyn Woo’s quote, look for opinions that are expressed in a “spirit of love, belonging, and oneness.” That, my friends, feels like the truth of the Gospel message that we should seek and ask the Holy Spirit to bless us with.

Lastly I offer most of the Blessing for Pentecost written and shared by poet and author Jan Richardson yesterday on her Facebook page. I highly recommend you read the blessing in its entirety.

Here’s one thing

you must understand

about this blessing:

it is not

for you alone.

It is stubborn

about this.

Do not even try

to lay hold of it

if you are by yourself,

thinking you can carry it

on your own.

To bear this blessing,

you must first take yourself

to a place where everyone

does not look like you

or think like you,

a place where they do not

believe precisely as you believe,

where their thoughts

and ideas and gestures

are not exact echoes

of your own.

Bring your sorrow.

Bring your grief.

Bring your fear.

Bring your weariness,

your pain,

your disgust at how broken

the world is,

how fractured,

how fragmented

by its fighting,

its wars,

its hungers,

its penchant for power,

its ceaseless repetition

of the history it refuses

to rise above.

I will not tell you

this blessing will fix all that.

But in the place

where you have gathered,

wait.

Watch.

Listen.

Lay aside your inability

to be surprised,

your resistance to what you

do not understand…

–

Again from Galatians; “If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit.”

I wish you abundant peace this week. Deena

Image: A photo from my pilgrimage to Italy. Bernini’s stained glass window “The Dove of the Holy Spirit”.