What a journey! What a pilgrimage through Eastertide! It’s hard to believe that it’s already been fifty days since we celebrated Easter. Were you informed by this devotional? Moved? Challenged?

Together, we can say that we were able to live into Easter using this devotional, a sort of divina cogitatio, and saw the Good News from different lenses:

Resurrection

Renewal

Reconciliation

Celebration

Beauty

'Ohana

Diversity

The insights have been plentiful, and I am grateful for all who contributed their words, their art, their music, their gifts. We moved through Easter with the return of the risen Christ, bringing hope to us all. But life continues to change around us. We just remembered Christ's departure on Ascension Day. What now? Must we face the challenges of this uncertain world without Christ? Are we left alone once again?

No.

Christ promised that the Holy Spirit would come to us in our time of isolation, or separateness, or loneliness. The Holy Spirit comes today on Pentecost to bind us as a people who believe in the rejuvenating, restorative, and redemptive love of Christ. We are graced with this powerful so that in our new life, in our new reality, we will never forget that we walk and breathe together, wading into the waters arm in arm.

On behalf of The Gathering, I invite you to welcome the Holy Spirit into your life, filling and binding us in our various contexts as an AAPI community, to each other and to the Church that Christ left for us. Let us remember our baptismal commitment to each other and with each other and for each other, so that we - in our gratitude for the gifts of grace raining upon us - can be molded and used to bring God's enduring and incomprehensible love to those who need to hear it most.

Spirit of the Living God
Fall fresh on me
Melt me, mold me
Fill me, use me
Spirit of the Living God
Fall fresh on me