Hear the Hover Over

The passages from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today offer a view of some of the circumstances in which we become aware of the Presence of God in our lives through the action of the Holy Spirit. In a fundamental way our sense of the Divine is often stirred by the still small voice within which whispers that we are in the midst of a transcendent event. This prompting is the invitation to sharpen our physical and spiritual senses for participation in a Life event. The text from the Acts of the Apostles tells of the rescue of Paul and Silas from jail by an earthquake. The jailer in this account attends to the call from Paul and, as Friar Jude Winkler comments, interrupts his plan to kill himself because of the disgrace he has brought upon his family. The times of despair and feeling defeated are often those times when God is most likely to be heard as He calls us to His Consolation. Father Larry Gillick SJ sets the last discourses of Jesus from the Gospel of John in the context of the talk to graduates which many people will hear at this time of year. Father Larry reminds us that we are also in the time of anticipation of the celebration of Jesus Ascension to the Father. In the transition of Jesus from being physically present in the temporal world to the Presence being physically alive in the Body of Christ we receive the promised Paraclete who is described by Father Larry with names like Protector-of-the-Truth, Urger-of-Life and Hoverer-Overer. Our experience of the Spirit in these and other roles resonates with the declaration of  Jesus in the words of the Evangelist John that those who reject this gift of Love are choosing sin and that the return of Jesus to the Father is the conviction of the Truth of Jesus mission to call us to the Father and that the evil one is defeated in all attempts to replace love with hate. We rejoice as we hear and welcome Divine communion in the invocation “Come Holy Spirit”