As a body is one though it has many parts,
and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body,
so also Christ.
For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,
whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons,
and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.

Excerpt from the second reading of Pentecost

1 Corinthians 12.12-13

The LMU community will virtually gather this Sunday, May 31 to celebrate the great feast of Pentecost, the birth of the Church. To attend, please click here.

On this day, the sacred scriptures remind and remember us to the story of those who came from all across the known world some 2,000 years ago to gather in one place. They each heard God speaking to them in one common voice that all understood in their own language erasing all the barriers and boundaries that separated them from one another. The message God spoke that day is a message God speaks to us today and every day: You are one human family.

This is our urgent fervent prayer now. We pray for an end to the racism that continues to grip our country and world. We pray for the end of the fear that leads to hate. We pray for a unity borne of love. We pray for an end to the demonization of those who are different from ourselves so that the demonizing ceases. We pray for leaders who work to unify all God’s children. We pray that those who try to separate God’s children one from another will have their hearts softened to see a new way of being. And, while we draw life from God’s Spirit to fill our lungs in this beautiful and fragile world, we pray for the conviction to do the hard work that lies ahead for we are bound together, and we are bound forward to the Reign of God.

We ask God to send the Holy Spirit to guide and fill us with the wisdom to do what is right and just for all God’s people – those who came before us, those among us now, and those who will come after us.  Amen.  Amen.  Amen.

Love and fear are the primary human motives.  Love is care and concern for the other(s); fear is fear for oneself.  What all human beings want is to live without fear.  We want what God wants for us; namely, to live in a community where fear is subordinated to love.  When I am afraid, I pull back from love for others; in effect, I abandon community in order to protect myself.  I may band together with some people like myself to protect myself and us from the “outsiders,” but neither my group nor I really have what we most deeply want because we fear the outsiders who could take away what we are protecting.

– William A. Barry, S.J.

Finding God in All Things: A Companion to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius (p.119)