Pentecost Novena

Happy Ascension Thursday at the close of the day. I remembered the Pentecost Novena for once. I am going to try to do this one that focuses on the gifts of the Holy Spirit: fear, piety, fortitude, knowledge, understanding, counsel, and wisdom.  In this busy season, I need a reminder that "only one thing is important -- eternal salvation" as the novena reflection for the first day starts out.

Epiclesis

I can’t believe that Pentecost is right around the corner - tomorrow by the time I post this... I wish it would receive a little more fanfare – maybe if I went to a charismatic church. Maybe if I could remember on Ascension Thursday to start a novena, I would feel more celebratory myself. But for now I’m thankful to have registered that the feast is approaching. Sally has an excellent clip of Anima Christi set to music. (I’m so glad other people search youtube for good music, so that I don’t have to.)

One thing that I miss about homeschooling is having the time to spend talking about and preparing for upcoming feasts with the kids. A favorite Pentecost project I learned as a CCD teacher was making a little construction paper dove with a three dimensional construction paper apple (or strawberry) hanging from yarn on which was written the fruits of the Holy Spirit, which I’m always confusing with the gifts.


The arrival of Pentecost marks approximately the half way point of my husband’s deployment – another reason to celebrate. Fifty days before Easter he left, and here we are fifty days after. One hundred days have flown by quickly. I’ve barely had time to be lonely. His frequent phone calls have made this deployment a lot easier than the time he deployed on a ship. The irony is that the more difficult deployment was not during wartime. I try not to read about suicide bombers in Kabul killing 18 people or roadside bombs in Kandahar maiming others, but perhaps one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit that I have received is that of faith that he will return home safely.


The weekend after Pentecost we’ll mark our fourteenth anniversary with a telephone call, I hope. If 100 days has flown by, 14 years have expired almost as quickly. It doesn’t seem that long ago that my husband and I were introduced in the college dining hall. I knew shortly thereafter that we would get married, and I believe we’ll continue to celebrate anniversaries until we die, although I’m fully aware of the many trials and threats that exist to derail that faith.

Even without the physical presence of my husband, the ties created by the sacrament are working. If anything, I almost feel more married since he’s been gone. I’m aware of that ring on my figure advertising the fact (as if the six kids in tow didn’t make it obvious) although I'm missing my accompanist, my handiman, my personal chef and chauffeur, and other things all wrapped in one good man.


Marriage is good when you're not sitting around wondering about what your husband can do for you next: when can he fix the toilet, when can he pick up some kids, when can he watch the kids so I can have some quiet time… Instead I’m thinking more about what have I done today to let him know he’s on my mind: have I sent an email, have I written a letter, sent a photo, put together a box…

Since our anniversary is near, I've been remembering our Mass of Matrimony and its numerous invocations of the Holy Spirit to bless the new couple. I learned the word “epiclesis” when we were preparing for marriage, and kept this quote on a handout of quotes about marriage when we were marriage prep facilitators:

“ In the epiclesis of this sacrament [of marriage] the spouses receive the Holy Spirit as the communion of love of Christ and the Church. The Holy Spirit is the seal of their covenant, the ever-available source of their love and the strength to renew their fidelity” (CCC 1624)

There is a couple at our church who attend daily Mass. They stand out because the husband wears a hospital mask over his mouth and looks about 10 or 20 years older than the wife. Each time I’ve seen them lately, he looks more and more frail. He’s lost his hair, his shoulders stoop a little further, he keeps losing weight. The wife guides him by the arm up to receive communion. I wonder how much longer I will see them together at Mass.


In the tenderness of the wife for her husband, it’s obvious that the comforts of marriage are much more than physical. Missing my husband’s smile and touch for six months is a small sacrifice compared to saying goodbye to him for life.



This couple is a great example of the kind of selfless love described in Humanae Vitae: “[Conjugal love] is a very special form of personal friendship, in which husband and wife generously share everything, without undue reservations or selfish calculations. Whoever truly loves his marriage partner, loves not only for what he receives, but for the partner’s self, rejoicing that he can enrich his partner with the gift of himself.”


To pray for this couple, so obviously loving each other for the other’s sake, is no chore. I also pray for the preservation of my husband’s life, and for the preservation of the life of our marriage, that “partnership of the whole of life” (CCC 1601).
What more eloquent way of expressing love than this:

“St John Chrysostom suggests that young husbands should say to their wives: I have taken you in my arms, and I love you, and I prefer you to my life itself. For the present life is nothing, and my most ardent dream is to spend it with you in such a way that we may be assured of not being separated in the life reserved for us. . . . I place your love above all things, and nothing would be more bitter or painful to me than to be of a different mind than you” (CCC 2365).

And what more elevated way of describing love than this:

“From the desire for the ‘unlimited’ good of another ‘I’ springs the whole creative drive of true love -- the drive to endow beloved persons with the good, to make them happy. This is, so to speak, the divine aspect of love. In point of fact, to desire ‘unlimited’ good for another person is really to desire God for that person: He alone is the objective fullness of the good, and only His goodness can fill every man to overflowing. . . . The great moral force of true love lies precisely in this desire for the happiness, for the true good, of another person. This is what makes it possible for a man to be reborn because of love, makes him aware of the riches within him, his spiritual fertility and creativity: I am capable of desiring the good for another person, therefore I am in general capable of desiring the good. . . . Even when I am ‘bad’, if true love awakens in me it bids me seek the true good where the object of my love is concerned. In this way, affirmation of the worth of another person is echoed in affirmation of the worth of one’s own person -- for it is awareness of the value of the person, not of sexual values, that makes a man desire the happiness of another ‘I’. When love attains its full dimensions, it introduces into a relationship not only a ‘climate’ of honesty between persons but a certain awareness of the ‘absolute’, a sense of contact with the unconditional and ultimate. Love is indeed the highest of moral values.” (Love and Responsibility)

Praying for the Holy Spirit to teach me to love.