This is the Sunday we celebrate the birth of our church. Jesus blew his breath on his apostles before he ascended into heaven, and the spirit descended on the gathering of those in prayer after Jesus was gone. Was this really the descent of the Holy Spirit, or was it an awakening of an awareness that the Holy Spirit was already in the lives of those present? The Spirit is present in all forms of life on our earth.
Jesus came to let us know just how much we had drifted away from wholeness, and how we had become divided within ourselves, and with each other. Jesus became human and, like us, a child of the earth and of the Spirit. His humanity (and ours) was inhabited by God, as earth is inhabited by God. We have become a divided world, and Jesus tried to show us how united we are. He talked to trees and to the water. He gave us bread to eat and said ‘take and eat, this is my body’, spelling out the fact that what comes out of the earth is his body. Was he then saying that the earth was also his body? Jesus was united with the earth in all his actions just by being human, and by eating of its fruit. Jesus also knew that the Spirit of his Father was in each breath he took, united with the Father.
In centuries past, our Anishnabek elders and wisdom keepers knew this unity, and they would lead, guide the people back to who they were if they went off balance and became divided. We are off balance, divided from each other and even within ourselves. Like St Paul, we do the things we don’t want to do and don’t do the things we need to do. We see our material world and concrete humanity as a separate entity from God, as separate from ourselves. We tend to only see our earthly nature and we are forever trying to reach the heavens with our prayers.
This Pentecost, let us see our wholeness in that oneness with God, and ourselves as spiritual beings growing in that knowledge. Each one of us is the human face of God and the earth is also a face of God. Let us accept and be happy to be who we are, weak, poor, rich and strong. Let us change our perceptions of what is weak, poor, strong, or rich, and know that there is no difference. The love of God and the God of love is in each of us. May we grow in the knowledge of who we are in all our fullness and claim who we are.
Sr. Terry (Kateri) Beaudry
