To live with the Spirit of God is to be a listener. It is to keep the vigil of mystery, earthless and still. One leans to catch the stirring of the Spirit, strange as the wind’s will. The soul that walks where the wind of the Spirit blows turns like a wandering weather-vane toward love. It may lament like Job or Jeremiah, echo the wounded hart, the mateless dove. It may rejoice in spaciousness of meadow that emulates the freedom of the sky. Always it walks in waylessness, unknowing; it has cast down forever from its hand the compass of the whither and the why.
Welcome to the parish blog of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Mill Valley, California
Tuesday, June 7, 2022
To live with the Spirit of God (Sr. Miriam of the Holy Spirit)
To live with the Spirit of God is to be a listener. It is to keep the vigil of mystery, earthless and still. One leans to catch the stirring of the Spirit, strange as the wind’s will. The soul that walks where the wind of the Spirit blows turns like a wandering weather-vane toward love. It may lament like Job or Jeremiah, echo the wounded hart, the mateless dove. It may rejoice in spaciousness of meadow that emulates the freedom of the sky. Always it walks in waylessness, unknowing; it has cast down forever from its hand the compass of the whither and the why.
Monday, June 6, 2022
Are we open to God's surprises? (Pope Francis)
Let us ask ourselves today: are we open to God’s surprises? Or are we closed and fearful before the newness of the Holy Spirit?
Do we have the courage to strike out along the new paths which God’s newness sets before us, or do we resist, barricaded in transient structures which have lost their capacity for openness to what is new?
--Pope Francis, Pentecost 2013
Image source: https://beasone.org/tag/holy-spirit/
Quotation source
Sunday, June 5, 2022
Breathe on me, breath of God (Brother Isaiah)
Saturday, June 4, 2022
God in us (Robert Baer)
--Robert Baer
Image source: El Greco, The Pentecost (ca. 1600), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pentecost%C3%A9s_(El_Greco,_1597).jpg Quotation source
Friday, June 3, 2022
Access to the holy heart of God (Bishop Robert Barron)
Jesus says that the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in Christ’s name, will teach his disciples everything. The Holy Spirit is the love shared by the Father and the Son. We have access to this holy heart of God only because the Father sent the Son into the world, into our dysfunction, even to the limits of godforsakenness—and thereby gathered all of the world into the dynamism of the divine life.
Thursday, June 2, 2022
Sunday Gospel Reflection, June 6, 2022: The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness...
Human beings often live in a state of constant discontent, sometimes heightened by pain and suffering. Frequently, that discontent is of our own making. Witness the actions of the people migrating in the east in the Book of Genesis, who decide to stop in Shinar and build a tower there. God recognizes their self-centeredness and arrogance and scatters them from there all over the earth. Creation has forgotten that God and only God is the source of all, that God is responsible for all that is. Recognizing the manifold works of God, Psalm 104 asks the Lord to send out his spirit, and renew the face of the earth. Even after Jesus’ death and rising, the Romans still experienced discontent: all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now, Paul writes to them. But the Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness, Paul reassures them, interceding for the holy ones according to God’s will. Moreover, as Jesus had promised at the Jewish feast of Tabernacles in John's Gospel, Rivers of living water will flow from within him who believes in me. We thirst for the fullness of God; if we believe in Jesus, we will find what we seek and that source of life that is the Spirit will flow from us into other people’s lives. The promise of the Spirit is that unity that will heal the disunity of Babel in Shinar; what God reveals in Jesus transcends all human limitations, eliminating division and allowing all to become conduits of the Spirit.
The confusion of Babel gives way to the unity of understanding when, in the Acts of the Apostles, the time for Pentecost was fulfilled. In Jerusalem on that day, each one hears the disciples speaking in his own language. Their proclamation of the good news is meant by all and understood by all, to bring them all together in belief in Jesus as the Messiah. Something extraordinary is happening, something that defies their ability to explain. Psalm 104 notes that when you send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth. In Jerusalem that day, all can say Jesus is Lord thanks to the Holy Spirit active in their midst. The Spirit may work in each of us differently, Paul tells the Corinthians, but it is all for the sake of the whole; the purpose of the Spirit is to draw us together into one body. When the disciples receive the Spirit directly from Jesus on the evening of that first day of the week, in John's Gospel, they are not yet ready; the doors are locked and will still be locked a week later. We know that the Spirit is in us as well; we know that Jesus believes we have it in us to be his disciples. We may need to grow into it, to grow away from our fundamental discontent, but we have what we need because we receive his Spirit in baptism, and we are thus a new creation. And then? We must live Christ, giving witness to the mercy of God, remaining fully present in him and allowing him to be fully present is us. Our job now is to love the world and to let love do what it is meant to do, serving our larger community through our unity, thanks to the Spirit, in the Body of Christ.
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
Wednesday, June 1, 2022
The paradox of expectation (Henri Nouwen)
Whereas patience is the mother of expectation, it is expectation itself that brings new joy to our lives. Jesus not only made us look at our pains, but also beyond them. You are sad now, but I shall see you again and your hearts will be full of joy. A man or woman without hope in the future cannot live creatively in the present. The paradox of expectation indeed is that those who believe in tomorrow can better live today, that those who expect joy to come out of sadness can discover the beginnings of a new life in the center of the old, that those who look forward to the returning Lord can discover him already in their midst.






