03 Jun Monday

“And, with the divine grace that was at work when the Gospel was first proclaimed, fill now once more the hearts of believers.”So prays then Collect of the Mass during the day. There is a very strong connection here between this solemnity and the work of the Church — evangelization! The church needs that grace From on high to do it. Notice that it is “fill the hearts” not the minds; we can be filled with all sorts of Catechism and Canon law material, but it is about our hearts! The Communion Prayer is similar: “that the gift of the Holy Spirit poured out upon her may retain al its force.”

In all truth, the church risks losing its heart to the current culture and losing the force of the Spirit’s gift for truth. How to recover, or perhaps to say, return? Or to walk into our future in this poured out grace and truth? Why is there resistance to evangelization? Is it the uneasy repute of the North American Evangelical phenomenon?l Has faith become personalized and individualized like everything else?

To the Acts reading, the “they” is vague. Preciously the eleven were mentioned, then a gathering in the upper room with the eleven and the women accompanying them, and then a group of one hundred and twenty. Mary was among them. When the day arrives, “they were all in one room together”. Perhaps we can assume that this just wasn’t the male apostles, that the author means to suggest “they all”, including and meaning a larger egalitarian group, therefore, meaning the whole church just the the strong wind filled the whole house, meaning the whole church. There an unfortunate debate today that some are more filled than others.