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Sunday, May 27, 2012

Pentecost Sunday


We always had a tradition in the Society of the Sacred Heart of drawing a gift and fruit of the Holy Spirit on the Feast of Pentecost; I like to continue the tradition and usually prepare the gifts and fruits for my community for them to choose at our community prayer tonight. I am not sure now if we drew the fruit and gift we were to pray for during the year or that the fruit and gift we drew each year meant that this was being given to us by the Holy Spirit for the year. I suspect it was both. I think that we forget how active the Holy Spirit is in our daily lives.
We all remember the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and I will try to list them here : Piety, Fear of the Lord, Fortitude, Knowledge, Understanding, Counsel, and Wisdom.
The gifts vary and I think one could list any dozen and they would all be correct. Here is what I recall: joy, charity, modesty, love, kindness, humility, meekness, generosity, courage, simplicity, goodness, compassion...
I suspect others will remember other fruits; one of the readings gives Paul's list and will include long-suffering...
Here is that list: "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. (Only eight given)

You might pray today to ask the Holy Spirit to choose the gift and fruit you need for this year - of course, we need them all but it always helps to strive for something and I suspect we get the whole package when we pray to the Holy Spirit and allow the Spirit to transform us!

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