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God our creator, the resurrection of your Son offers life to all the peoples of earth. By your Holy Spirit, kindle in us the fire of your love, empowering our lives for service and our tongues for praise, through your Son, Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
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Gospel: John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
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 "When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.
But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them. "I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, "Where are you going?' But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned. "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you."
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Reflection
As a boy my family often lived by the ocean - Key West, Virginia Beach, Southern California. The constant wind off the waters and the rhythmic "whoosh" of the breakers always seemed to fill me up and make me more than I was. Call it inspiration, invigoration: the winds were more than me yet part of me. They still are. Since childhood my visits to the ocean have been rare and brief, yet the smell of the salt sea, the sound of the waves and that wind - I can breathe it in this moment as if I were there. And once again I am made something more: a human soul encircled with the movement of the divine Spirit.
The Pentecost Spirit swept through a room in Jerusalem and in that moment the disciples became something more. They became apostles, the sent ones who speak the Word to the world. The divine Spirit encircled their souls, opened their voices and gave speech to the mercy of God in Jesus the Resurrected Lord, gave speech to salvation and about 3000 believed that very day.
We might think of Pentecost as simply a day remembered each year in the Church calendar. But if Pentecost is a day its sun has not yet set. Just as the wind off the ocean continues whether I am there or not - the Spirit is without beginning and does not cease. Over the waters in creation, in the mouths of prophets, in the voice of St. Peter: the Spirit of Truth, the Advocate Jesus promised, continues to swirl and breathe, to make us more than we are and to fill us with the testimony of Jesus crucified and risen: the Spirit of Pentecost.
Thanks and glory be to God.
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