Our Only Comforter

As we honor today Our Lady, Mother of the Church, it seems fitting to speak of her Spouse, the Holy Spirit, in this afterglow of the great solemnity of Pentecost.  Specifically I would like to focus on one particular word describing Him.  While praying the novena leading up to Pentecost, one of His titles burst through the veil formed by the mundane repetition of having heard it said many times through my life:

Comforter.

I was listening to this Veni Sancte Spiritus when the word penetrated into the depths of my heart through the lyrics:

You are our only Comforter.

So many times we desire comfort to counter the trials and tribulations of our lives.  We look for the simple things—the reliable things—the coffee and cookies.

Of course we also look deeper.  We try to find happiness in fulfilling work, in relationships with those dear to us, in following our vocations, and so on.  Yet sooner or later all of these things fail to satisfy us.  The world will fail you left and right, as say the lyrics of the song "I'm Not Alone" from the singer Plumb.

Where do we look?

Everywhere except to the Holy Spirit.  After all, it's incredibly difficult to look at an invisible reality who happens to be the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity.  If you can find a way to look at Him, let me know.

I can't.  Although gazing at the beautiful alabaster image of the Holy Spirit symbolized by a dove in St. Peter's does help.

Looking to Him means opening ourselves to something beyond our control—it means letting go of control—abandoning our expectations.  We may find ourselves tossed on the seas of doubt and fear or joy and longing.  We may feel nothing.  Yet if we do dare to sink deep within ourselves, to stop looking outside, and to find Him within, we may just find that He gives the comfort that the world can never give.  For He gives the comfort of belonging, of being welcome, of being loved: the fulfillment of our hearts' deepest desires.  He gives the comfort of heaven—the comfort of our true home.

Of course He may not give it right away.  He likely won't give all the comfort we desire or at least not all the time.  Yet He can't give any comfort to hearts that are closed to Him.

If we will be patient and trust Him, we will experience comfort according to His promise.

It was the pouring out of the Holy Spirit that brought the Church to birth.  It is His pouring out of Himself on us today that brings us to birth as the Church—as the Mystical Body of Christ.  And it is Our Lady who is the Mother of Christ and therefore also the Mother of the Church.

Veni Sancte Spiritus! Veni per Mariam!

A Day Reflecting a Lifetime: Wisdom from the End of the Third Decade

As I lifted my canoe to my shoulder and walked with it down to the lake, I had no thought of finding spiritual reflection.  I wanted simply to enjoy time spent in nature as a way to celebrate reaching the completion of three decades in this mortal coil.  Yet somehow that connection back to creation could not help but stir the soul toward connection with the Creator and that connection must needs shed light upon our wandering journey upon this earth.

Dipping my paddle in the lake first on one side of the canoe and then the other, I made my wending way across its surface, not knowing where I would end up or how long I could go on while the sun beat hot upon me.  I could have grown discouraged at my lack of progress as I struggled on, watching kayaks pass me with bows straight while my canoe's bow turned back and forth, floundering about a bit like a dying fish.  The delightful thing about a piece of plastic folded into a canoe—I call it my origami canoe—is its lightness, but of course that very lightness means it takes little to send it back and forth from side to side as if it had no clear sense of direction.  Each stroke of my paddle as I knelt in its center moved me as much to right or left as it did forward.  Every wave, no mater how small, and every breath of wind pushed me about in some direction or other.

Instead of growing discouraged as I do when things go awry in the minutiae of daily life I found my mind turned to reflection.  My journey across the lake became an analogy for life.

I tend to think that one ought to set one's sight on a goal and head directly toward it without turning to one side or the other, pursuing one's vocation and life purpose with unfailing success.  Yet somehow the path across the years seems rather to wend back and forth across the waters of life.

Alone in the canoe I could not keep a straight course.  It would have been easier with a companion, for we would have balanced each other's paddle strokes, working in unison toward that goal.  A companion too would have broken the silence that hung about me and seemed to wrap me about in a strange sort of contemplation.

It was not the doing that mattered even though the working of my muscles to send the canoe skimming across the waters gave me a feeling of strength, of belonging, of doing what I was created to do.  It was being that mattered more.  Instead of needing, seeking, striving, and a hundred other verbs describing our efforts to take control, I was responding gently to what came to me, breathing in the fresh air, as free as the proverbial child.

Why do we not live so?  Why do we fret and worry ourselves into illness or misery on account of the littlest things?

Sometimes I wonder whether this lack of peace and the rampant anxiety and depression in our society comes solely from this frenzied life that we live in this modern world we like to consider progressive and advanced and enlightened.  Have we achieved these seemingly-good adjectives only at the expense of our inner peace?  Perhaps even at the expense of contemplation?

Then I must wonder how much we would give up to regain that peace. Would we surrender all that we hold dear in order to cross the void of emptiness into that great work of the soul that is God's gift of contemplation?

Perhaps then we might forget our faltering footsteps and breathe in unison with a deeper force: the breath that stirred the waters at creation.

Veni Sancte Spiritus!