The Spirit of the Lord Fills the Whole World

Sister Charitas
 in front of her decorated cell door
on her Jubilee Day

We are still in the afterglow of Sister Charitas' Golden Jubilee.  This picture seems Pentecostal to me and so seems appropriate to head this post on the Solemnity of Holy Pentecost.  One of the gifts we have received in our Indian Sisters is their talent for decorating on great feast days.

Today we celebrate the coming of the "Sweet Guest of the Soul", the Holy Spirit who embraces us in His Love and brings us into the intimate life of the Holy Trinity.  Not only on the Church as a whole, but to each individual soul does He come.  Here is one Sister's experience expressed poetically:

Spiritus Domini Replevit

The subtle Spirit of the Lord

Forms and fills the ephemeral world,

The fragile bubble nothing,

But for His tender holding.

How easy His flow, both out and in

Across the membranes, micro-thin,

Dividing each substantial thing

From all and every other thing,

Excepting Him.

But the microcosm of the heart,

Hard and heavy from the start,

Gently He holds, but waits to fill.

Attentively He stays until

The fretful fears arise, then stilled

In His Divine embrace,

Surrender a tremulous space

For the free-willed cry

Accepting Him.

Then He, rushing wind,

Down blows the stone divide,

Twining her, His chosen Bride.