767 ELM STREET * ROCKY HILL * CONNECTICUT 06067
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767 ELM STREET * ROCKY HILL * CONNECTICUT 06067 |
           
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The famous advocate of integrative medicine, Dr. Weil, points to the essential mystery of our being, our breathing. No one knows where it comes from unless as a believer we recognize its origin is God, who breathed life into human beings. God’s breath is the breath that gives life, new life that can never die. All that makes for life comes from the breath of God. It is the breath that creates the profound diversity all around us, yet holds all of this in unity. Everything is connected in God’s breath of the Holy Spirit. In the previous decade a woman by the name of Pam Reynolds was diagnosed with a large brain aneurysm at the base of brain. In order for her to have a surgical procedure done to fix the problem she would have to have her heart stopped for one hour and her body temperature dropped to 60 degrees F. In effect, she would be clinically dead for one hour, no heartbeat, no brain function. What happened while she was clinically dead is quite remarkable. Upon being induced into clinical death she told the doctors later that she was hovering over her body watching the operation. She described in accurate detail the procedure and the instruments used by the doctors despite the fact that her eyes had been taped shut and covered and her ears were filled with clicking devices. None of the doctors could explain how someone could describe such things when clinically dead. But things did not stop there. Pam went on to say, “Then I saw a light, small at first but getting larger as I moved toward it or it toward me. It was Love, joy and peace. I asked the Light, “Is the light God?” and the answer I got was, “No, the light is not God, the light is what happens when God breathes.” “And I thought to myself, I am standing in the breath of God.” Many people like Pam who have had such powerful and often life-altering experiences are convinced that all of us live, move, and have our being in the breath of God every day, but we do not see it because of our experience of separation from each other. They also strongly assert, to a person, that we are all living in a fundamental unity with each other and that what effects one person affects all, whether we know it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not. Everything is related to everything else. These insights gleaned from these powerful spiritual experiences are being continually confirmed by modern science on the subatomic level and the cosmic level-we live in a system, we are all part of each other. So why don’t human beings live this way? Can they live this way? Well, human beings tend to separate themselves from others out of fear or ambition. They see the other person of another race as stranger or a threat and so exclude them from the group. And we have ample evidence as to where that ends up; racism fueled by bigotry, war, discrimination, hatred, grudges and the like. These types of things separate people from each other and as the experience of Pentecost tells us, is a lie. We are not created for separation from each other, God and a proper relationship to all creation. We are created to be united to one another, to understand one another on a level where not even our differences of language can impede our unity. One only has to watch small children who speak different languages playing together, despite the language difference they are able to communicate on a deeper level in order to be in relationship. While being diverse, the Spirit holds them together in a fundamental unity. Our great feast of Pentecost marks the beginning of the mission of the Church to preach the gospel to the whole world for all times. This preaching is not done only with words, but in the action of the whole Church to help heal the separations in our lives, to help make compassion the language that unites all peoples-in effect, to allow itself to be animated by the Holy Spirit to help bring wholeness that tell us that even the “great separator”, death, has been overcome. To tell all people that what awaits us is standing in the breath of God with all those that have gone before us and all those that will come after us. We also know that God’s Spirit has conferred a great diversity of gifts among all peoples. These gifts are not to be used for the purposes of separation but rather, to bring the human family together despite our differences. Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, in their own ways have separated people from each other, not because of God, but because of fear of the other. But this need not be the case. Catholics can appreciate the spiritual genius and truth of another tradition while remaining faithful to their own. In this way the Holy Spirit can work among us to create a unity among the great diversity of the human race. In our mission as Church we are called to be special agents of the Spirit’s work; a work that heals, a work that reconciles, a work that leads to new life. Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D.Min. Return to Saint James Home Page |