“And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own language?”

When I first read this passage, the word that jumped out to me was “bewildered”. I could picture the crowd: shocked, maybe even panicking as they tried to process what they were hearing. How, indeed, could this happen? What power was at work?

Now, if this had happened today, maybe we wouldn’t be so fazed. After all, Google Translate can do a lot. (Apparently not enough that a barista in Montreal didn’t still tell me to just order my coffee in English, though!) Maybe it wouldn’t be the language-translation part that stopped us in our tracks. Perhaps it would be the experience of understanding and being heard.

When’s the last time you felt truly heard and understood by someone? That feeling that the other person just completely and utterly gets you? I crave this feeling. It’s part of why I love long conversations with friends. I treasure those moments marked by the deep warmth and buzz of connection — and by the sense of being part of something shared, part of a community.

Now, imagine how you’d feel if, suddenly, every person you met understood you. Not just your words, I mean, but your feelings and your experiences at the deepest levels. And not just that… you could understand them, too. Not merely listen to their words, but hear and receive what they were saying, without judgment, misconception, or misinterpretation. The gift of understanding would unstop your ears. Imagine how amazing that would feel: you might laugh, from joy and relief. Or weep, from finally understanding their stories and the cries of their hearts. You might fall silent, struck with wonder and awe.

Language is how we connect to each other — and also disconnect from each other. Communities are built through shared languages. Maybe our languages today look a little different than they did at Pentecost — I’m thinking more along the lines of “left and right” or “pro-choice and pro-life” than “Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic” — but I guess “us and them” divisions have always been part of human history. So many different ways of speaking and hearing and being in this world, and so much un-hearing, disconnect, and misunderstanding. But Jesus has sent us His Spirit, and we know that He can do the unimaginable — no matter how poor our understanding, how closed our ears, or how hardened our hearts. 

When we truly listen to and hear each other, we create a common language. We build community. We create unity. It is so easy to see how the fruits of the Holy Spirit might grow in this nourishing space — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. I think all these little, tender moments of connection and community are a foretaste of what is to come. They are a way to heal each other and our world.

So, come, Holy Spirit, and be present even in our littlest moments of connection. Pour out Your gifts upon us so that we might hear, receive, and understand with open ears and open hearts. Translate our words into Love for all to hear. Amen.




​Kim Tan
​

For the last year or so, since restrictions lifted, I have had the privilege of bringing our beautiful granddaughter to Mass every Sunday morning. I have been teaching her the rituals of the Catholic Mass, bit by bit: bow to the tabernacle, make the sign of the cross, say “Lord hear our prayer” (which she does VERY loudly – along with her trademark OH-MAN when we say Amen), offer a sign of peace, sing and dance if she wants as her Poppy plays praise and worship. She has made friends and has community in our parish. Most importantly, perhaps, we talk about Jesus. Because she is only 3½ , we started by explaining that Jesus is her friend, that He is everywhere, especially in her heart. She will, from time to time, clasp her heart and tell someone that she feels Jesus in her heart and that He is talking to her.


The other day, when the priest pointed to the cross where Jesus’ body hangs, she tugged on my sleeve and asked, “Nanny, did Jesus really die up there?” I took a breath inward, struck by the enormity of the question. How do I explain to this wee soul that yes, He did die up there but came back to life and then was taken up to eternal life with His Father? Thankfully, she has found a Bible story series that she loves to watch that gives a beautiful depiction of the empty tomb. Having reminded her of that story, I thought I was off the hook, until she asked me if He had taken His last breath, and what would happen to her when she took her last breath. Seated on my lap, staring straight into my eyes, she waited with expectancy for my answer. 


How do you answer a question like that from a little child of God?


Sunday’s Gospel does that for us. Yes, He died and rose again. He came back to open our minds to all that He had taught and all that was written and prophesied. So, I told her that He died so that the world could be good and have good – like her, and her parents, and Nanny and Poppy and, most importantly, love — and that, because of that, we could be happy. We could sing and dance here. Her Poppy reminded us that when we take our last breath, we can go to Heaven, just like Jesus did, and be with Him and His Father. She climbed off my lap. Mass ended, and she joyfully wandered around the church building, telling someone that they had “beautiful singing,” helping someone else to tidy up, and going about doing what 3½-year-old souls do when they are loved and secure. She had asked the hard question and was filled with joy.


Let us pray: Father God, grant me the innocence of a child. Help me to ask the hard questions and joyfully accept Your answers. May I continually be in the temple, blessing You. And, when I draw my last breath, may my life here on earth make me worthy of being taken up into Heaven where I will be with You for all eternity. Amen. 




​Sandy Graves

Fact: God’s power is immeasurable. 


Also fact: human power is finite. 


Yes, there are many powerful people in the world. There are those who use their power for good and, unfortunately, those who use their power for evil. These acts of power can be world changing or life changing, impacting a community or an individual. Regardless, human power has limits. 


Recently I learned the limits of my own power. In early January I had surgery. Unanticipated. I was told my recovery period would be six to eight weeks. This was my first ever surgery so I asked my surgeon what she meant by recovery period. She told me I would be off work and could do very little physical activity. Huh. I wasn't sure I could do that. I don’t sit still very well.  Sure I can sit on my couch for a lazy Sunday afternoon or lie on a beach for a few hours on a warm summer day — but several weeks of doing very little? How was I going to survive that? For the first time, in a long time, I felt powerless. 


Before I left the hospital, the discharge nurse gave me my post-surgery instructions. During the conversation she paused, looked at me, and said, “Few women, and men for that matter, are given permission to do nothing for six to eight weeks. Enjoy the break.” I wasn’t convinced. However, as the initial soreness and weariness of surgery wore away, I began to lean into my recovery time. “Be still and know that I am God” became my mantra. I journaled. I prayed. I rested. In the process, I developed a greater understanding, knowledge and appreciation of how my body works. I remember looking at my incision site and being in total awe at how a huge cut had healed closed. I gained a new and overwhelming sense of gratitude for how I am created and for the One who created me. God does amazing work!


As my body healed, I simply sat with myself and with our God. I was living Saint Paul’s prayer to the Ephesians. I was allowing God to reveal His power to me in my powerlessness. I opened my heart to receive what He wanted me to know about Him and, in turn, began to recognize the times that God did amazing work through those around me… and through me!


Saint Paul’s prayer is for the community in Ephesus, but it is also for us: a prayer that we can recognize God’s power working in our past, our present and our future. So, dear reader, I pray, with expectation and not hesitation, that we can all lean into that power when we’re feeling powerless. May we truly know the greatness of our God and the greatness to which He calls each and everyone of us — because God does amazing work.




​Aurea Sadi

There’s quite a space between 5 and 50, and there were a lot of things that floored me the first time I came to Mass as an adult. The presence of God in the people in the foyer. The drum kit up-lit with purple lights. (I really didn’t see that one coming). The obvious joy in the lifting up of Jesus in song. And in the Word. And in the Bread. 


The weight given to the Word of God in the Mass, I also didn’t see coming. The ambo on the same marble floor as the altar. The passing of the baton from the books of history to the psalm, from the psalm to the letters of the early church, and then the way they all handed it off to the Gospel to bring it home.


So here, in this song for the Ascension, I find the psalm holding hands with what comes before and what follows after.  


In the first reading, the disciples’ ask was too small. “Is now the time when you show yourself King of Israel?” In the psalm, He is lifted as King of all the Earth. In the second reading He is seen as King of Heaven — King of All.  

​
O Jesus, just before You rose up from the earth into the clouds on Your way to sit at Your Father’s right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, just before that — when they asked You if it was time for You to show Yourself as king of a small land, bordered by river and sea and sand — was their ask about You, or was it about themselves? Having followed You for three years, were they really asking, “Is this the time when we get to live as a free nation? When the oppression stops?”


O my Sweet Jesus, my Awesome God, is my own ask too small, my understanding of freedom too stunted to even know what it is that You are really offering me?  


I can’t really fault the disciples. They were dealing with real hardship. In the midst of a stressful month at the end of a couple of stressful years, I can’t even seem to weather the dog eating a bag of icing sugar on our red couch and my husband breaking the vacuum in his attempt to clean it up. Carrying the heavy stuff is easy; it’s the small things that I seem to drop. So, instead, I think I’ll just put it all down and lift up my hands and praise Your name.  Jesus.  What a beautiful name.




Noreen Smith
​