In one of my eighth grade classes I had a young, beautiful girl who I thought was a little too free with her favors toward the boys.  I sent my judgment home in one of my periodic reports.  But it was veiled in appropriate language.  What can you say?  Your daughter’s going to be another Mary Magdalene?  (Incidentally M. Magdalene made it to sainthood.)

I am now hearing she’s living with a guy, third baby, after her first husband left her for faithlessness.  What can I do?  Pray?  I pray that my example, for what it was, had a lapsed effect, or that she meet a young, handsome man who is attracted to her with strong moral standards.  May she fall hopelessly in love with  him.

That’s the kind of effect Jesus had on M. M.

The word Spirit in Holy Spirit comes from the Latin spiritus, a breath, or wind, and the Holy Spirit blows where it wills.  I rely on it when I’m writing, to give me inspiration, but sometimes I don’t feel it is there.  Remember, it blows where it wills.

Yet it can turn the most everyday script into something appropriate, and that is the marvel of it.  It was present on the Twelve Apostles in visible tongues of fire  just before the Ascension of Jesus forty days after Easter, and has enlightened the faithful since then.

He is usually represented as a dove, but is one with the Father, forming the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, beyond human comprehension.  It’s good to know there are some ideas beyond us.

Travel seems to make people forget their grief.  I remember, in teaching eighth grade, we read a story about a woman, recently widowed, who took the insurance money her husband left her and went on a round-the-world trip.  Stranded in Afghanistan (before the war), she and her two children were made   captives by a tribal chief who meant to make her his concubine.  Her equally stranded cab driver translated her cry, “Oh, bad luck seems to follow me wherever I go.”  The tribal chief took off with her luggage.

My own mother, after my invalid grandmother died, took off to join her husband here in the States, crossing occupied France and Spain to board the boat in 1942, in Lisbon, with her three sons.  My nephew, Philip, has just completed a bike trip across America following the death of his father, who was remembered for his cross-country motorcycle ride after his divorce.

In our sub-conscious we know how to heal.  It evolved with us under the comforting hand of the Father in heaven.

Nobody can outdo God, the Father, in generosity.  Earlier in my life I made what was a mere gesture of generosity toward His Son.  It came to nothing, given my efficiency.

He returned that gesture by giving me a son whose generosity is proverbial.  I have friends, good people all, whose sons won’t speak to them.  Not only does my son give me a Father’s Day card that thanks me for the way I raised him, but he puts more than several hundred dollars in it to help me meet expenses.  If you ask me, he’s a brother of the Divine Son.

But watch out.  The way God does things you may not even notice.  I could have thought my son inherited all this; sure, sure, taking all the credit.  Or God may be returning a favor you did sixty years ago, as in my case.  How could I make the connection?

St. Francis of Assisi took Christ’s words of unconcern about worldly goods literally, and never bothered about income.  No salary, no inheritance, no funding for him – it was all happenstance .  Fortunately, it worked out.  But the lesson remained: don’t let concerns for this life block out its joys.

There is a certain peace in trusting a heavenly father to provide the means of sustenance.  After all, we live in a world where jobs are plentiful, even if it means migrating to the southern border of the USA.  (May we never lose that privileged position.)

People love a world where ambition and intelligence pay off.  It makes existence so much more exciting.  But to worry about it?  St. Francis said, “Never!”