Have you traveled to an unfamiliar land and experienced the hospitality of others? The Holy Spirit is your guide through this life, received in Baptism. You are renewed with vibrant life, even with the unfamiliar, even when confused.

Eastertime officially ends today. But the celebration never ends, because the good news of Jesus remains just as good. So the church calendar doesn't simply run off the rails once it passes out of the three obvious seasons: Advent, Lent, and Easter. It keeps moving forward into what used to be essentially the Season of Pentecost—a.k.a. the “season of the church.”

esus entered, stood among them, and said, “Peace to you.” Then he showed them his hands and side. The disciples, seeing the Master with their own eyes, were exuberant.

As the long seasons of Lent and Easter come to a close, we teeter on the border of “Ordinary Time,” witnesses to the Spirit before the world’s darkness. Keep the flame alive! Tend the fire: Use your gifts, ordinary as they may seem.

Brothers and sisters, let us acknowledge our sins, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries.

Wind, fire, life-giving breath. Any Israelite of Jesus’ time would have recognized in these elements the presence and action of God. But something was different—something was new. A new covenant proclaimed not only to a single nation but to all people made one in spirit and mission.

One of the strangest things Jesus ever did after the Resurrection, from our fastidiously clean, middle-class American perspective, was to breathe on his disciples. It’s something we just don’t do—unless, of course, we are trying to save a life.

What you are is God’s gift to you, what you become is your gift to God. —Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer