Throughout this Easter season, I attended a convention of Mission Formation Officers within the Jesuit Colleges Community; I used to be on the organizing committee. As I watched the year-long work of the committee lastly come collectively, enhanced by the power and keenness of the individuals, I felt such future promise and paschal pleasure. Even now, weeks later, I’m savoring the graces. However I’m additionally working via the letdown feeling that inevitably occurs when a Spirit-filled week has come to an finish. I’m wondering if that is how the disciples felt after they received that “retreat excessive” of seeing Jesus up shut on the highway to Emmaus after which watched him depart them as soon as once more.
Years in the past, in my second post on this site, I wrote a couple of sensible Jesuit priest who had been an instance for me of what deep contemplation and intimate relationship with God appeared like in apply. Whereas on the convention, surrounded by each lay and Jesuit ministers enthusiastic about persevering with the mission of each the Catholic Church and the Society of Jesus, I felt as soon as once more the presence of Johnny Edwards, SJ, in addition to the presence of a number of others who had gone earlier than me. I spotted fairly shortly that there have been many individuals additionally calling to thoughts the knowledge and classes that each Jesuits and lay individuals steeped within the Non secular Workout routines had imparted on them. It appeared like each dialog I had concerning the mission included a mirrored image on one thing every of us had realized from another person who had gone earlier than.
As we head into the closing days of the Easter season, I’m nonetheless attempting my greatest to maintain up my commitment to lean intentionally into my friendship with God. And in an actual, tangible method, I’ve felt God leaning again via each the individuals journeying with me in life and those that have gone earlier than me in demise. Although I can now not ask a number of of my mentors for steerage and recommendation, I really feel steeped of their knowledge and fortified with their assist, and that’s connecting me greater than ever to the Risen Jesus.
Typically I want that I might expertise what the Apostles experienced on Pentecost. Regardless of how fearful it sounds, I want I might really feel the violent rush of wind fill the place the place I sit and see the tongues of fireside relaxation upon my head and the heads of these round me. I want I might really feel as if the phrases that got here out of my mouth weren’t my very own however the phrases of the Spirit proclaimed in a method that enabled all to listen to the Good Information.
Then I keep in mind that typically the Spirit comes via nice winds and hearth, and typically the Spirit is available in a quiet whisper that permeates hearts from the within out. The expertise of being amongst my colleagues in Ignatian training, alongside the tangible presence of these we have now cherished and misplaced alongside the best way, was the quiet whisper all of us wanted to proceed the work in earnest.
