Feast of Pentecost

Pastor’s Pen
Feast of Pentecost
Sunday, June 5, 2022
St. Augustine Catholic Church

Dear Church Family,

A joyous Holy Spirit Day in your spiritual journey, Alleluia!!  The last couple of weeks I have imagined myself looking around the church and seeing people (I know most everybody), but I am looking around and seeing all of the people and I am just wishing them prayerfully that they be filled with the Holy Spirit. I hope that they have a vibrancy to their faith and that they are ‘disciple makers’ meaning they are glad to share the good News and have a good understanding of being close to the Lord. So that is what I am doing today. Just taking a few minutes when we all stand and keep looking around to see different people and then just praying that they will be filled with the Holy Spirit in every way. Just let us powerfully encourage them to have God’s Holy Spirit within them, Alleluia. So, church, this is what I am thinking today as I start my little reflection on the Feast of Pentecost.

Here is a little summary of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Fruits of the Holy Spirit. As you look around the church, just pray , pray, pray that each person has some of these Gifts and Fruits of the Holy Spirit. Not just among the people here, but with those at your workplace and family. Just wish them all of these great gifts. We certainly have them in one form or another. We tweak them so that they become all the more real. Here are the Gifts of the Holy Spirit to start with.

1. Wisdom – this enables us to know God and esteem divine things above all worldly things and just know how to prioritize putting the most important things first. A person of wisdom just has that attitude.
2. Understanding helps us to understand our Catholic faith, the Bible, and all the saints and everything that helps us to have a better knowledge of our faith.
3. Counsel -this is the knowledge necessary to guide ourselves and others to do God’s will. It helps us help others get through spiritual and temporal problems, for sure. We help one another by being people of wise counsel.
4. Fortitude is strength we need to endure and have courage. It helps us suffer persecutions and adversities for the sake of good. So it is a strengthening power. Amen!
5. Knowledge helps us to know God and ourselves as God knows us.
6. Piety – this gift infuses us with love for serving God and seeing Him in all events through a holy life of prayer being able to put God first.
7. Fear of the Lord – The psalmist says, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” The real fear is that we love the Lord so much that we don’t want to in any way offend our God.

Now here are the Fruits of the Holy Spirit.

1. Charity – Since the Holy Spirt is Love and gives us the infused theological virtue of charity to prefer God over everyone and everything. We desire this loving union with God and it overflows in our love for ourselves and our neighbor, for God’s sake. So charity is just filled with Love.
2. Joy and happiness are realized when we live for God and know that someday we will be with Him, now and forever in heaven. You have that joy as you pray ‘ deep down in your soul’ knowing that that is the most important thing to have.
3. Peace and we just know how wonderful it is to be at peace with ourselves and for the world to be at peace.
4. Patience and we know how important patience is.
5. Kindness and we know that a person who is kind is just living in the way the Lord wants them to live.
6. Goodness is just a gracious way of living without strife, negativity, or wrongdoing.
7. Mildness or Gentleness goes along with graciousness. Having gentle attitudes are so important in our relationships with others.
8. Modesty does not just refer to our outward appearance but having a humble attitude, acknowledging that any of your successes, achievements, or talents or merits are not truly, wholly, or fully yours but gifts from God.  Just know where all your gifts come from.
9. Self-control or temperance does not mean denying oneself of what one needs and not necessarily what one wants when it is something good, but it is the exercise of moderation in all things.
10. Chastity is the submission of physical desire to right reason, subjugating it toones spiritual nature. It means engaging our physical desires only within the appropriate context.  For example, engaging in sexual activity within marriage.
11. Faith – these are the fruits of the Holy Sprit that should just ooze out of us. We pray that not only that everybody has these fruits but they use them to live and love the way that the Lord loves us. So read over these and keep thinking about them and then you will have a practical attitude toward the Gifts and Fruits of the Holy Spirit. Amen! Alleluia!