A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John.
In the evening of the same day,
The first day of the week,
The doors were closed in the room where the disciples were for fear of the Jews.
Jesus came and stood among them.
He said to them,
Peace be with you,
And showed them his hands and his side.
The disciples were filled with joy when they saw the Lord,
And he said to them again,
Peace be with you.
As the Father sent me,
So am I sending you.
After saying this,
He breathed on them and said,
Receive the Holy Spirit.
For those whose sins you forgive,
They are forgiven.
For those whose sins you retain,
They are retained.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you,
Lord Jesus Christ.
Receiving the Holy Spirit.
I think it's such an amazing thing that trying to put into words that gift is near impossible.
Receiving God physically into ourselves.
Knowing that wherever we are and whatever we do,
God is there.
God is inside of us.
God is inside of every one of us.
So when I look at somebody,
God is there.
I look at God.
When I see myself in the mirror,
I look at God because God is always there.
That actually makes me ashamed of a lot of things that I have done.
Knowing that when I did things to hurt other people,
When I did things to hurt myself,
God is there.
Not looking at me from heaven,
Not only looking at me from heaven,
But being there with me,
Experiencing what I am doing as a part of me.
That is absolutely terrifying to me.
And I really want to run away from that idea,
But I can't because God is there.
God was there.
And God will always be there.
But we see that in the Gospel according to John,
Jesus said,
Receive the Holy Spirit.
And then immediately after that,
For those who sinned,
You forgive,
They are forgiven.
Isn't that telling?
That even though we might do things that really take us away from the harmony of God,
We do things that we would classify as bad,
Really,
Really,
Really bad things that Jesus said right after receiving the Holy Spirit,
That sins can be forgiven.
The karma that we create when we do things that take us out of harmony with God can be reset.
That he taught his disciples to do so through,
For the Catholics,
The sacrament of reconciliation through confession,
Which is much more than just saying a couple of words and then feeling better about ourselves.
It is facing what we have done and getting back into realignment,
Back into harmony with our beings,
With our very souls,
With Christ,
With God,
Aligning the Holy Spirit or aligning ourselves with the Holy Spirit inside of us.
That makes me want to run there because also in as much as we love,
I love to chastise myself for things that I have done that hurt people and that hurt myself.
And I love sitting in that misery.
And I know a lot of people share that.
We love focusing on how bad we are,
How unlovable we are.
Because look at us,
What have I done?
Look at all the hurt that I have caused.
And I love that energy of sitting in sorrow because then we don't have to look at the fact that the opposite is also true.
In those times that we have experienced true grace,
Those times that we hugged somebody and they hugged us back and the world stopped,
God was there,
God is there too.
Things that seem mundane,
When we have a cup of coffee and we sit and we read a book,
That God is there too and we forget that.
I am noticing more and more in my own life that expectations,
The expectations that I have of life are not always realistic.
We expect to have lives,
Movie lives,
Lives of adventure where we go from adrenaline rush to adrenaline rush and every day is this massive adventure where we save the world or we save this and we experience all of these massive and these magical things on a daily basis.
It is exhausting.
No.
Life has a lot of moments of just monotony.
Life has a lot of moments of just being and in those times God is there.
For me,
This Pentecost over the past couple of days in preparation for Pentecost,
I have been shown and God shows me these things sometimes in a hard way and over and over and over until I learn and until I listen or maybe until I hear to take these moments of being and to see them as holy because every single moment,
Moments of light,
Moments of darkness,
Moments of in between grey,
Every single moment is God,
Is with God,
Is with the divine,
Is through the divine.
And I'm going to stop,
I'm trying to stop expecting every day to be filled with adventure and for me I would love to start focusing on the fact that every day,
Every moment is filled with the awesome nearness,
In-ness,
Through-ness of God because when we do that I do believe that we will start to listen more and more.
We will start to open our inner ears.
When we stop expecting life to be a constant rollercoaster of adventure,
Of joy,
When we stop expecting that we start having moments of silence and in those moments of silence we can start listening,
Actively listening and just being and sitting and when we listen we can also feel that the Holy Spirit is with us,
That the Holy Spirit is in us and we can hear the Holy Spirit talk to us in different ways.
It might be in a picture that we see,
It might be in a voice that we hear which some people will have us locked up but it might be in this beautiful little voice,
It might be in a very loud voice from somebody phoning you and saying why haven't you spoken to me in a long time but we will hear the Holy Spirit.
So on Pentecost it is my wish that you and I will become more and more aware that every moment is holy,
That we will become more and more aware that every moment is with God because every moment is God.
Amen.
