2008

Mothers and Pentecost

In the universal Church today we celebrate the feast of Pentecost. We think of Pentecost as the birthday of the Church, that marvelous time when the Holy Spirit filled the apostles with the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, giving them the courage and confidence to spread the faith of Jesus Christ to all corners of the world. That wonderful moment is told to us in our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Without the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost to that small band of Jesus’ frightened disciples, we would not have a Church that today numbers over a billion people.

In the United States today, we also celebrate Mother’s Day. We recognize in this celebration the wonderful contributions that mothers have made to our lives. We wish all mothers here a joyous and happy Mother’s Day. Speaking only for myself, without the influence of my mother in my life, I would not be standing in front of you as a deacon. My mother (along with my father) raised me in the Catholic faith and in so many ways it was an honor to be her son. I am sure there are many of you who feel the same way. And we also pray today for those whose relationships with their mother might not be, or was not as positive. We pray for reconciliation for all mothers with their children on this special commemoration.

It is very rare that we would celebrate Pentecost and Mother’s Day on the same day. But let me suggest that this quirk in the liturgical and secular calendar is most appropriate. For while the Holy Spirit sends his sevenfold gifts to all of us through the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, let me suggest that the Spirit does so in a most special way to mothers and to women in general.

While we also speak of fruits and charisms of the Holy Spirit, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are the following: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.  While we all receive such gifts in different measures as St. Paul tells us in our second reading, we can see them all present in mothers and all women in a special way.

Women have enormous wisdom and a profound sense of loving and giving that are worth more than gold. It is not for nothing that in the Book of Wisdom, wisdom is always referred to in the feminine. Women are often wiser than men are because in certain situations they may know less but they understand more.  Cleverness is often left for men but wisdom is for women. Men minds are analytic; women’s are holistic and look at the totality of a particular issue more easily. Wisdom is not the same as scholarship or technical knowledge. The latter is often the refuge of people (more men than women) who spend their lives bent on books but forget how to live.  Here we are reminded of St. Bonaventure’s adage that men act but women endure. Indeed, women’s wisdom transcends and outlasts men’s desire to act.

God created women to be beautiful and their charm, lovableness and beauty exercise a powerful attraction that is central to the goodness of human life; women are fairer in beauty and weaker in physical strength. But they are clearly not lacking in character for they are the sex honored to give birth to the Savior of the world and through which the Body of Christ is sustained and renews itself. The one true God is the God of life and Jesus is the life of the soul. Mothers, who have the sublime mission of giving life, do have the Holy Spirit’s gift of understanding, and they intuitively weave this gift into their daily lives and the lives of the people they love. They play an integral role in the creative, transforming work of God   For mothers, there is a metaphysical bond between womanhood and God when they are carrying human life within them. In pregnancy, women have the profound privilege of carrying two souls in their bodies simultaneously.

Girls are typically less spoiled than boys and therefore there is more sensitivity, intuition and empathic behavior toward others. This makes them a source of the great gift of counsel from the Holy Spirit. Women are better at sensing pain in others and joining that pain to themselves emotionally, psychologically and through service to others. Have you ever noticed that when children are sick, they always want their mom. Mothers have great understanding of the fundamental and lasting importance of human life versus the ashes and dust of human accomplishments. A computer or a machine will fade away, but a human being will last forever in terms of body and soul and relationship with the Creator. A mother’s greater closeness to creation is her strength.

As for fortitude, a mother’s propensity for sacrifice and suffering emulates Jesus Christ; indeed the agony of childbirth is a human reflection of the sufferings of Christ who redeemed us. It is often women who bring men back to God and the Church not vice versa, because men are trapped in this ridiculous sense of a desire for human control that makes worship something for sissies. Anyone remembering the Passion of Our Lord can see this male trait in its most destructive form, the folly of the control impulse which often leads not just to male ruin, but the ruin of others men control or over whom they exercise authority;

The Spirit’s gift of knowledge of a different kind is present in women and mothers. Women see the forest, men see the trees; their sense of time and space is geometric, not linear as men’s are. This greater sense of empathy also leads to a greater understanding of the need for legal protections against the weak. Before Martin Luther King there was Rosa Parks, expanded voting rights for minorities had as their historical foundations the trailblazing work of the suffragettes, women are leaders in protection of children and children’s rights,  It is called Mothers Against Drunk Driving, not Fathers Against Drunk Driving. This kind of knowledge may not be book knowledge, rather knowledge of the needs of the human being without resort to statistics or force of argument.

Piety in the face of God is also a gift to the Holy Spirit. With women and mothers, piety toward God often takes the form of convincing men to do the right thing before God when often women lack the secular power to do it themselves. Mahatma Gandhi, it is said, feared neither man nor government, neither prison, nor poverty nor death, but he did fear his wife.  Woman humanize men; they often demonstrate greater human dignity in the face of masculine rowdiness and often contain and prevent that rowdiness from getting out of control.

They can also, for good and ill, bring men to their knees emotionally by their beauty, vulnerability, frailty and supposed weakness.  This can be used to bring about much good.  Queen Esther used her beauty in the Old Testament  to convince a pagan King to save the Israelites from execution. What is more powerful than a very large man brought to his knees emotionally by his mother when she asks for something? What is more powerful than watching innocent little girls charm their fathers in ways they usually cannot resist?  .

Finally, women and mothers understand more clearly what it is to receive the gift of a fear of the Lord. Women cry more than men it is true. All of women’s tears collected since the beginning of time would compete with the sea, men’s would fill a pond of modest size. Women do have a greater melding of heart and mind; they are more likely to be wounded than men, whose sense of linearity and literal ideas of meaning shields them to a certain extent from emotion.  Women tend to take their feelings much more seriously than men; they are more attuned to them, they may dwell on them, be more romantic and sentimental, more affected by their dreams, their imagination, their fancy.

But this need not be a weakness. This tendency of a deeper sense of feeling often means that women receive extraordinary graces from God more often, or at least they discern them more often, they are more receptive to God’s voice speaking to them.  Women more than men grasp intuitively that they are vulnerable, and that they need God’s help to live a happy and productive life. This may be one reason why there are more women than men in church, and more men than women in prison. But the fear (that is healthy respect of and empathy for of the Lord) women and mothers possess is clearly present in Scripture. In particular, the Stations of the Cross honor women’s fear of the Lord. At the fourth station, Jesus meets Mary his mother. He meets Veronica at the sixth station, and the women of Jerusalem at the eighth. Mary and Mary Magdalene and other women are at the foot of the Cross-. other than John, where were all the men?

Women showed more courage than any of Jesus’ male followers. If the faith of a woman in a man is strong, his chances of success are infinitely greater. The gift of fear of the Lord roots women in human loyalty that is so often critical to men’s success. The rootedness of men tends to be less reliable; a woman’s moral power is often more important to her than human accomplishments. For as Scripture reminds us, the exalted shall be humbled, and the humbled shall be exalted.

To be sure, brothers and sisters, God is neither man or woman. But all of us are made in God’s image and likeness. And so God is our spiritual mother, not just our spiritual father. And with respect to images of God in Scripture, it is the Holy Spirit that most often resembles the gifts that women bring to our faith and to our lives. It is the Holy Spirit that breathes life upon the earth in the Creation story. To whom do we draw our first breath? Our mothers. As we have already noted, the gift of wisdom in Old Testament Scripture is referred to in the feminine. Finally, in what form does the Holy Spirit appear over Jesus when He is baptized by John the Baptist? A lion? a bear? No, a beautiful dove.

So on this rare chronological congruence of Pentecost and Mother’s Day, let us honor  the Holy Spirit, who gives all of us gifts from the divine godhead essential to the salvation of both men and women. And let us honor our mothers, who bring so much to the faith and worship of God and its loving carrying out in our human lives. 

Perhaps you have noticed the fine print. Tonight, we are not celebrating Pentecost. Granted, the colors are the same. You may have even noticed the banner of the Holy Spirit as you entered the church, but for now we are celebrating the vigil of Pentecost, recapturing a feeling of anticipation. As the gospel tells us, “There was no spirit, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.”

Like the apostles in the upper room, we find ourselves waiting, much like those who came to the Easter Vigil, fifty days ago. That night we came into a dark church anticipating the resurrection of Jesus. Our darkness was soon dispelled by the light of the Easter candle. For the past seven weeks, we have been in the company of the risen Lord. Tonight, that isn’t the case. Instead, we encounter Jesus standing in the temple area, inviting anyone who thirsts to come to him.

How odd that may seem, given that this is still the season of Easter.  Unlike the vigil of Easter, this vigil occurs in the midst of rejoicing. We know that Jesus is raised from the dead. We have been singing alleluias for seven weeks with great joy; we have been covered by the saving waters of baptism.  However, the readings tonight remind us that something is missing.  That something is the Holy Spirit, the least understood and most unappreciated person of the Holy Trinity. That is what the disciples were waiting for in the days following Jesus’ ascension.  Without the Spirit, the Church would never have been born and the good news of Jesus would have simply faded away.

I don’t doubt that the Holy Spirit is missing from the lives of many Catholics today. Granted, like me, they were baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit and a fair number of them were even confirmed, the one sacrament we most associate with the Holy Spirit, but I venture to say that the Spirit is missing from their lives, otherwise, they would be here in our midst. Instead, their faith is lifeless, like dry bones.

God wants us to yearn for the Holy Spirit in our lives. Imagine yourself on a roller coaster; the thrill that comes with every climb, the excitement that comes with each descent. Or imagine the great anticipation you had as a child waiting for Christmas or your birthday or the arrival of a close relative or friend. That is what God wants us to experience with our faith. He wants to infuse breath into our dry bones. God wants our faith to be alive and be vibrant, but that can only happen if we quiet ourselves enough from our busy lives to hear the breath of the Spirit in our midst.

As St. Paul points out, in hope we are saved but do we truly care? Until we find ourselves in a crisis, a fair number don’t. Ho-hum is the attitude many people have about their relationship with God. I will call them “flat Christians.” They remind me of the flat characters one finds in movies or novels who never get excited; they do what is expected of them, acting in predictable ways.  Flat Christians live as though nothing exciting will ever happen.

Are you one of them, or can you imagine the Holy Spirit coming on the scene and infusing you with an enthusiasm equal to any you have ever experienced before? For the past nine days, our parish has been praying a novena, which we conclude tonight, invoking the Holy Spirit to come into our lives. Why? Because without its presence in our midst, we risk becoming flat Christians.

We implore the Holy Spirit to penetrate us, to bring life to our dry bones, to give new life to our faith, to transform us just as our gifts of bread and wine are transformed.

For some of us, encountering the Spirit takes a crisis rather than a vigil. In his novel, Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens touches on that reality. As a young child, Oliver is orphaned. He is sent to a workhouse in London. Eventually he winds up being taken in by a band of professional pickpockets. They are the only family that Oliver has ever known.

There comes a moment in this story when Oliver has to face rejection by those he loved. Ultimately the collapse of this young boy’s world brings him in touch with a grandfather he never knew.

Remember the promise Jesus made that he would never leave us orphaned? He assured his listeners that the Father would give them the Spirit of truth, which the world neither sees nor accepts, for it rejects divine wisdom. He will send us that Spirit, but not likely with the same drama of dancing flames that the apostles witnessed in the upper room.

As creatures and sinners we need the Holy Spirit to sustain our relationship with God, to love God and our neighbor in the deepest way that allows for acceptance and forgiveness when the need for either arise.

The ancient Hebrew word for Spirit is ruah, which means breath. So quiet is our typical breath that we hardly notice. In much the same way, the Spirit is present in our midst, working quietly when and where we least expect: in our homes, our workplaces, during a crisis, an illness, in the aftermath of a tragedy or a crime.  The bottom line is this: Jesus Christ will not disappoint those who are eager to be with him, for in their eagerness, they will encounter his gift of the Holy Spirit. He will quench their thirst and give life to their dry bones.
 

Fr. Anthony de Mello, one of my favorite spiritual writers, once said, “When you speak about reality, you are attempting to put the inexpressible into words, so your words are certain to be misunderstood.” He then illustrated his point with this example.

A village blacksmith found an apprentice willing to work hard for low pay. The smith immediately began instructing the lad. “When I take the metal out of the fire, I will lay it down on the anvil, and when I nod my head, you will hit it with the hammer.” The apprentice did precisely what he thought he was told. Needless to say, the next day he was the village blacksmith.

Sometimes we are victims of misunderstandings because what we said is not always heard by the other who was “listening.” How often, for example, have you as parents heard your children moan, “You just don’t understand me!” I imagine many husbands and wives feel their spouses really don’t understand them either.  As precise as our language may be, we can easily fail to understand what the other person is endeavoring to say.  Fortunately, one does not have to fully understand someone in order to love that person. In one of her letters, Flannery O’Connor wrote, “I love a great number of people, but I understand none of them.”

That could be said for how many of us feel about God. We love God, otherwise we would not be here on this beautiful sunny day but how readily do we understand God, especially the mystery of the Holy Trinity? From the beginning, Christians have recognized that God was not one being as evidenced in Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth when he wrote, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.”

Down through the ages, the greatest minds in church history have tried to comprehend the mystery of the Holy Trinity: we believe in one God, not three, yet this one God we believe in has three persons. How can there be three persons, each with a divine nature, each infinite, yet distinct from the other two, and still claim to be one God?

Amongst the first theologians to attempt an explanation of this mystery was St. Augustine. According to legend, as he was walking along the beach, he encountered a child pouring buckets of water from the sea into a hole dug in the sand. When asked what she was doing, the girl explained that she was going to put the whole sea into the hole. “But that isn’t possible,” St. Augustine protested, “The sea will never fit into that hole!”  The little girl replied, “But it is easier to put the sea into this little hole than for you to understand the Holy Trinity!”

We have heard of or resonated with other images that explain the Trinity such as St. Patrick and his three leaf clover. Closer to home, you may have noticed the round table in the narthex that holds the statue of St. Anne. If I were to remove any one of the three legs, the remaining two legs would not support the marble top.  Likewise, the Trinity celebrates the truth that one person cannot exist without the support of the other two. The Father cannot be a father without a son; the son would have no existence without the Father, and the Spirit is the bond of love between them.

In his letter, John gives us the best definition of God we can have, “God is love.”  Since we are created in the image of God, the very nature of God implies that interpersonal relationships are very much a part of our being. We are shaped by the relationships in our lives.

Rather than picture God as some silent, bearded ancient overweight guru sitting on a distant mountain top, the more fitting image of God would be three friends closely interacting with one another.

If God is so close to us and loves us so dearly, why then is the world filled with so much misery, evil, misfortune, and injustice? Why are we left feeling as though there is so little goodness in our midst? The truth is the world is filled with much more love and goodness than we sometimes realize. The devil is doing whatever is possible to convince us that God does not exist or that God does not love us and some people are convinced of that, judging by the headlines that daily speak to us of tragedy, terror, violence, and events that disrupt the serenity of our times.  However, keep in mind that headlines speak to us of the unusual, not the ordinary things that happen. In other words, there is much more love and good in our midst than we realize or appreciate.

In essence, the inexpressible mystery of the Holy Trinity celebrates the goodness and love to be found in all of our relationships, both human and divine. A monk at St. John’s once shared in class this observation, “There is enough good in the worst of us to remind us that we are all made in the image of God. Unfortunately, there is also enough malice in the best of us to confirm that we are only an image.”

What we notice depends on what we choose to see in others. When we train ourselves to look for the good in those around us, we will discover that God is very much in our midst. When we choose not to see the good in others, then we are opting not to look for God.  Far from being impersonal, we can see that God is very personal, coming through to us in countless ways through the many relationships in our lives. No wonder, God is revealed to us as Trinity, three persons in one, for what better way is there to convey God’s true nature to us?
 

Free Will and the Right Choice

Recently, the son of an old farmer was sent to prison for bank robbery. It was springtime and the farmer needed his large field plowed for planting. With his son now gone, and the old farmer too feeble to plow it himself, he wondered what he would do.

He went to visit his son in prison and explained his dilemma of which his son was already aware. But his son apparently did not want to do much about it. He told his father as they visited that he did not want his father to plow that field. For as his son explained, that was where he had hid the money from his bank robbery.

His father went home depressed and dejected. He loved his son and thought his son loved him. But he wondered how his son could be so callous in not suggesting how his father could solve his dilemma. The next morning, the old man was shocked to see about two dozen representatives of the sheriff’s office plowing his field. Then he understood what his son had done. Anticipating that their conversation in prison was being overheard, he had led the sheriff’s office to his father’s backfield. In a search for money that they never found, the sheriff’s office had unwittingly plowed his field for nothing.

Now with due respect for God’s seventh commandment, thou shalt not steal, let me suggest that in some ways God himself can be as clever as this bank robber. For God never stops looking for ways for us to plow his field of salvation, only this time the plowing is fruitful, if only we will just do it.

Thinking about this story is most appropriate this weekend. For we celebrate today the feast of the Ascension. This feast, coming about 40 or so days after Easter is a key and actually quite underrated feast in our liturgical calendar.

It would be easy to focus on the magnitude of the actual event. After all, we don’t see people levitating off the ground and ascending skyward, at least not on their own. Our Church teaches this event actually happened, as described in our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles this morning. The Ascension represents the final event of Jesus’ public life on earth.

But the end of Jesus’ public life obviously does not end God’s relationship with us. And it is a good thing. Because at this point let me something that might seem controversial. If all that Jesus did was enter our world as a human, die a horrible death for our sins, rise from the dead to show that sin and death could be conquered, and then perform this remarkable miracle of the Ascension, it would still not have been enough for us to achieve heaven.  He would still need, like the bank robber, to lead us back to him.

God loves us so much that he not only came to this earth to save us, he did not and does not compel us to follow Him. He gives His creatures free will so that our love of Him, our decision to live as Jesus did is our choice. The choice to return to him is ours. We don’t need God if we choose not to follow Him or return to Him.

God’s providing man with free will establishes the fundamental choice and contradiction of the human condition.  But this is more than just a philosophical point.  We need only look around us.  Humans have enormous gifts from God that enable them to design, engineer and produce marvelous airplanes.  We also have the evil to ram them into the World Trade Center and kill thousands.

Humans have incredible initiative and entrepreneurial spirit that helps to produce enormous wealth and prosperity.  We also have the ability to forget how that wealth was generated and tolerate a world in which two-thirds of humanity lives in poverty and income disparities in our own country continue without much concern.

The great beauty of God’s creation is managed with careful stewardship at times; just look at our national and local parks.  But humanity can also pollute our water and air and trash our green space with litter and careless setting of fires.

Great technology can generate mineral wealth and a very productive economy.  But would we really care about the politics and conflicts of the Middle East quite so much if inhabitants of the region grew broccoli for a living?

Human beings have been willing to endure enormous sacrifices in defense of human rights and individual and societal freedoms. They also have the ability to pursue wars of dubious or nonexistent moral value, killing thousands, tens of thousands, and millions for unclear or even evil purposes.

Some might say that following God’s laws to love Him and others, to follow the message of the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes and the teachings of the Church is the absence of freedom, or somehow a failure of leadership.

This is just wrong.  Choosing to love God and one another is the ultimate freedom and enmeshes us with the free expression of love among the persons of God.  We seek to live the truth in love. As our Lord tells his apostles in our Gospel from Matthew this morning, we try to bring others to the Christian life by example and not coercion. We have the ultimate freedom to communicate with God through prayer, Scripture, sacrament, and Scripture. Living out God’s word brings a love, joy and peace that is so far superior to anger, jealousy, violence and the quest for possessions at the expense of others. As St. Paul tells us in our second reading this morning, living the faith gives us the amazing and wonderful fullness of communion with God and other believers.

If we really want to be a Christian, admittedly the choice is not easy. And we would not have the strength to make the choice of a genuine Christian life without God. To make that choice work, God would need to send us the third person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit, completing and making permanent the intervention of God in the lives of human beings. The constant presence of the Holy Spirit, who offers us fruits, gifts, and charisms strengthens us and give others and us what we need to return forever to God.

So there we have it. God the Creator brought humans to life. God the Redeemer restored the loving covenant that God gave us, the best model for us to live our lives. God the Counselor and Guide pours out his very three-part divine completeness for us through the special arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. This is the faith essence of the Ascension.

So the Ascension is not a mere historical event. It is a critical progression in God’s saving plan for all of us. It helps enable our souls to ascend as well. And it reminds us of the ability of God through the tools and spiritual gifts God gives us to ascend, if you will our human spirits to the joy of the Christian life. Like the clever bank robber, the Lord puts people and things into our life to help us to understand that love of God and others is the best way to live. But we do have a choice. Plow the field of salvation or let it lie and watch weeds grow in our souls. Let us pray that the feast of the Ascension helps us to make the right choice.
 

One word jumps out at me as I read this gospel, a word you don’t hear elsewhere in any gospel: orphans. “I will not leave you orphans,” Jesus tells his disciples. We typically think of orphans as children who have lost their parents either through death or desertion. Although I was 33 when my mother died, I felt like an orphan then because life did change when I buried her; without my parents, a chapter in my life had ended.

The thought of being alone can be frightening for most of us because we depend on one another to survive and thrive.  As we grow up, we never lose our need for attention, compassion, care and love. Life is full of relationships and love is what keeps the best of them going.  We cannot bear the notion of being alone.

The good news we hear from Jesus is that we will never be alone. Our relationship with him, his Father, and the Holy Spirit will never end. He speaks of an unconditional love that is ours when we come to realize the unique relationship that exists between the Father, him and us.

Many words can be used to describe love, but one that comes to mind in light of Jesus’ words is commitment. The most common example of that is found in marriage. When a man and woman fall in love with each other and decide to spend the rest of their lives together, they commit themselves to each other. They see themselves as belonging to one another. They expect each other to honor the vows made at their wedding until death do they part.

Some years ago, divers located a 400 year old sunken ship off the coast of Ireland. Among the treasures they found was a man’s wedding ring. When it was cleaned, the divers noticed an etching on the wide band of two hands holding a heart. Beneath the etching were the words, “I have nothing more to give to you.” That sounds like total commitment to each other, if you ask me. In healthy marriages, spouses are totally committed to each other.

That is what Jesus is trying to say to his disciples and to us in the gospel. He assures us that we will never be left alone. He is totally committing himself to us for all time. Are we just as committed to Jesus as he is to us?

When we are committed to any relationship, we care about the other person. The example that hits closest to home for most of us would be our families. Parents and children, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins and in-laws usually have close relationships that reflect being committed to one another.

If we really love someone, we want to be linked with that person. That is what I hear Jesus saying here. He loves us and always wants to be with us. How then do we best connect with him? He tells us simply, observe my commandments. Coming together as a faith community to celebrate the Mass, a command that he voiced at the Last Supper, is what the Church has done ever since the first Easter. Through the Eucharist, Jesus stays with those who believe in him so that they never feel abandoned.

Relationships demand a sense of commitment if they are to survive. We know that first hand from the friendships in our lives. Those that are casual may not last for long, while those that last reflect the commitment two friends have for one another.

Knowing how committed Jesus is to us prompts the question, how committed are we to him and to the church which he founded, the church to which we belong? The Catholic Church has endeavored to proclaim the Good News of Christ from the very beginning to all corners of the world, living up to its name of being universal. The Catholic Church actively pursues this mission not only through our parish on the local level but also through the Archdiocese, which supports 63 vital ministries through the generous response of supporters like you and me. These ministries touch the lives of countless residents of Western Washington, reminding them that in the eyes of God, they are not orphaned. The annual appeal, for example, gives support to our hospital and jail ministries, retired priests and nuns, the formation of our seminarians and deacons in training, schools, Catholic Youth Organization, the tribunal, campus ministry, and Catholic Community Services.

The goal this year to make all this possible is nearly $10 million. That may sound monumental, but the goal can be achieved when everyone chips in. In his letter, Archbishop Brunett poses the question, “Would you be able to consider a pledge of $1 a day in support of the Catholic Church in Western Washington?” That pledge can be done over a span of time with monthly payments, the use of electronic fund transfer from your checking or savings account, the use of a credit card or even direct deposit from your bank. If you cannot give at this level, please know that every gift, no matter the amount, is greatly appreciated. If you are employed, see if your employer has a gift matching program to potentially double the amount of your donation.

Next Sunday is commitment Sunday. Please give prayerful thought to what you can give  to build a future full of hope and return your envelope then. If you are ready to make your pledge today, please drop your envelope in the collection basket. You need not include any payment at this time. Again, thank you for your generous response, which last year was the fifth highest in the archdiocese.  Your gift enabled us to acquire a generator, so there will be no more blackouts. This year, our rebate will be directed toward upgrading the heating and cooling system of the church and necessary repair work to the rectory that is long overdue. Last year, more than half of you responded; this year I hope everyone will respond, for believe it or not, we all do benefit when the Church is able to fulfill its many ministries. On behalf of the many whose lives you touch, thank you for honoring your commitment to the Church of Western Washington, for your gift does send the message that no one need feel orphaned.