Slideshow image

[video message is below]

This past Sunday, we celebrated Pentecost and read the Gospel account of Jesus with the disciples in the upper room on the day of the resurrection. The story says that Jesus appeared to them, greeted them with “Peace be with you,” and then Jesus says, “As the Father sent me, so I send you.”

Jesus takes a next step of making a new creation by breathing new life through God’s Holy Spirit upon his disciples. They are made into the church — a body of people, a collection of humanity that is animated and empowered and sent forth by the Spirit.

In this time after the Celebration of Pentecost, which we call the “Ordinary Time,” I pray that in the ordinary things of life in these extraordinary times, that we will allow that kind of self-surrender to the Spirit of God that impels us forward in love, to make good God's will through our lives and through our words. May we have the openness to receive that new creation and become ever more fully what God is making us to be.