Pentecost – Abbey of St. Walburga

Veni, Sancte Spiritus

April 27, 2024

A reflection by our Abbess, Mother Maria-Michael Newe, OSB, as the Church prepares for the celebration of Pentecost and prays, “Veni, Sancte Spiritus” (Come, Holy Spirit)

Abbey of St. Walburga Easter Vigil Mass

After Christ’s Resurrection, we hear that wonderful story about how He prepares a meal for his disciples on the shore of the lake, and tells them, “Come, have breakfast” (cf. John 21). After this, he asks Peter three times if he loves Him, and instructs him, “Follow me.” You would think that this would be enough for Peter, but of course he takes his eyes off of the Lord and sees John nearby, and has to ask, “Lord, what about him?” It makes me smile how patient the Lord is with Peter, and how He simply responds, “What if I want him to remain until I come? What concern is it of yours? You follow me.”

There is such wisdom in considering this – that if we get so wrapped up in the lives of everybody else, we might just miss our own. Sometimes we get down with comparing ourselves with others, thinking, “He is more loved” or “She is more loved,” and we believe we’ve been left in the dust. Our love should be above that. What really matters is that we love. There is such happiness in doing that. What an incredible gift it is, and what a freedom. So rather than getting caught up with how much we are loved, perhaps we should change the question to ask how much we love? Others’ love for us may come and go, but our love doesn’t have to come and go. Our love can be stable. The best advice is to love God, and everything about Him. Peter was still turning around looking at everything else, but all he had to do was look at Jesus, and it would have been enough. Let us learn from Peter’s experience – sometimes the Scriptures are there to help us learn from others’ mistakes so we don’t have to make the same ones. So let us be at peace with whatever the Lord gives us in life, and be content knowing that we are beloved by God.

In this blessed time after Easter, as the Church receives another outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, I encourage everyone to pray a Novena (a prayer prayed for nine consecutive days) asking the Holy Spirit to pour His gifts into you in abundance, especially the gift of love – And believe that you’re going to get what you ask for. God is the “Creator Spirit,” and just as He is still creating new wonders in nature (have you heard about the new ocean being formed in Africa?!), He is still creating and re-creating you. I heard that Michelangelo would look at a block of marble and start chipping away, and only then see what was “in it.” The Holy Spirit is within us, and sees who we truly are, and chips away at everything that is not us – if we let Him. And the more He chips away, the more we become bearers of light. That is so key to the work of the Holy Spirit: Light. Light in every way. We can pray with Psalm 51, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new spirit within me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit” (v. 12, 14). God is joy – let Him fill you completely with His joy. We can pray that every day: “Give me Your joy! Uphold me! Create me anew. Help me to follow You, that I may belong wholly to You.” This is the Benedictine vow of conversatio morum, our ongoing conversion. I pray this for everyone, that we might all be born anew each morning.

Evil wants to destroy life, but God wants to bring life – the world needs our witness to the power of re-creation today. And one of the most powerful gifts of the Holy Spirit is forgiveness. “[Jesus] said to the disciples, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (John 20:21-23). Every time we go to the sacrament of reconciliation, we receive this gift. Where there is unforgiveness, evil has an open door. If you want to experience the power of the Spirit, then forgive. Priests have the power to forgive us sacramentally, but we too get to participate in this healing power by forgiving another freely, mercifully, like Christ. It doesn’t mean that you will forget the wrongs done to you, or feel good when you think about the person, but forgiveness is an act of your will. Choose forgiveness, that you may release the captives in your own heart, and also be freed yourself.

We hear in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8), and I would add to that – “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God everywhere.” I hope that we are given new eyes to see God everywhere, and in everything, for that’s what it means to have a new heart. To be created anew is to see everything anew. Be new. God says in Revelation, “I will make all things new” (Rev. 21:5). Do you believe that? If you do, it will happen. As one of the saints said (I forgot where I read this), you will be like a house on fire. A soul afire with divine love is like a house on fire – when it is burning, everything inside is thrown out the windows. And so when a soul is consumed by the flame of divine love, it casts out all that is unnecessary, and concentrates on all that is eternal: only love.

I would like to leave you with these two Scripture verses:

“Thus says the Lord GOD: From the four winds come, O breath, and breathe into these slain that they may come to life.” (Ezekiel 37:9).

“The Spirit of the Lord will come upon you mightily…and you shall be changed into another man” (1 Samuel 10:6)

Veni, Sancte Spiritus!

Come, Holy Ghost
send down those beams,
which sweetly flow in silent streams
from Thy bright throne above.

O come, Thou Father of the poor;
O come, Thou source of all our store,
come, fill our hearts with love.

O Thou, of comforters the best,
O Thou, the soul’s delightful guest,
the pilgrim’s sweet relief.

Rest art Thou in our toil, most sweet
refreshment in the noonday heat;
and solace in our grief.

O blessed Light of life Thou art;
fill with Thy light the inmost heart
of those who hope in Thee.

Without Thy Godhead nothing can,
have any price or worth in man,
nothing can harmless be.

Lord, wash our sinful stains away,
refresh from heaven our barren clay,
our wounds and bruises heal.

To Thy sweet yoke our stiff necks bow,
warm with Thy fire our hearts of snow,
our wandering feet recall.

Grant to Thy faithful, dearest Lord,
whose only hope is Thy sure word,
the sevenfold gifts of grace.

Grant us in life Thy grace that we,
in peace may die and ever be,
in joy before Thy face.
Amen. Alleluia.
Translation of the Traditional Latin Squence for Pentecost

On Christ’s Ascension

May 24, 2023

A reflection by Mother Maria-Michael Newe, OSB

In John 15 and 16, Jesus tells his apostles that He is about to return to His Father – I can imagine there was a great heaviness in His voice due to His imminent passion and death, but then it seems that a light breaks through the darkness when He speaks of the coming of the Paraclete. He tells his apostles to actually get excited, because He is about to send them the Holy Spirit. And we should be excited, too. We should feel the excitement of this time leading up to Pentecost. Jesus has died for you. Jesus has risen for you. Heaven has been opened for you. And Jesus continues to pour out His Holy Spirit on you. What a glory. What a joy!

Some lovely “Ascension clouds” over the Abbey of St. Walburga

Luke tells us of Jesus’ Ascension in his Gospel: “Then he led them [out] as far as Bethany, raised his hands, and blessed them. As he blessed them he parted from them and was taken up to heaven. They did him homage and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple praising God” (Luke 24:50-53). Let us do the same as the apostles – let us go to church, full of excitement for what’s coming, a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Let us imitate the zeal of the apostles in the early Church, who lived as though Jesus would return any minute.

We also hear a description of the Ascension in the Acts of the Apostles: “When they had gathered together they asked him, ‘Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He answered them, ‘It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ When he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight. While they were looking intently at the sky as he was going, suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven’” (Acts 1:6-11). So, I encourage you, every once in a while, remember to look up at the sky. Is He there? One day, He really will come, whether it is in our lifetime or not. The fact that it’s going to happen is glorious – And we will be taken up to meet Him in the clouds (cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:17). Think about this! We should be excited to hear about these things and ponder them, and respond by living full of expectation for His coming. I hope we can all live with the spark of joy that this news brings, because the world needs the joy of God.

“The departing Jesus does not make his way to some distant star. He enters into communion of power and life with the living God, into God’s dominion over space… Because Jesus is with the Father, he has not gone away but remains close to us. Now he is no longer in one particular place in the world as he had been before the ‘Ascension’: now, through his power over space, he is present and accessible to all—throughout history and in every place… ‘We have come to know a threefold coming of the Lord. The third coming takes place between the other two…his first coming was in the flesh and in weakness, this intermediary coming is in the spirit and in power, the last coming will be in glory and majesty’ (In Adventu Domini [by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux]).”
Pope Benedict XVI, “Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week”

The Gift of the Spirit

July 9, 2019

A reflection on Pentecost Sunday by Mother Maria Michael Newe, OSB

In Eden, after the Fall, the focus of Adam and Eve that was once directed toward God and eternal things was drawn to earth like a magnet. Love was twisted from being centered on God to being centered on self, and this is the great tragedy of our fallen state. But Pentecost changes everything for us. The Holy Spirit gives us the ability to strive to love rightly again. The gift of the Spirit prompts us to hate the weeds (our sins) that keep trying to take root in our souls. Our goal should be to return to Eden in our souls; and we do this through contrition and Reconciliation, responding to the Spirit’s promptings to continually uproot our vices by sorrowing over them and seeking the loving mercy of the Father. Remember the parable that Jesus Himself uses to teach us about the love of our Father in Luke 15, and let us never tire of running to the One who receives us as the loving father receives his prodigal son.

Not only does the Spirit grant us the grace of conversion; various virtues and gifts are given as well. In The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena, we read her beautiful insight into how the Lord deigned that we each receive different virtues in order to build each other up, to build up the Body of Christ for the good of the world. The Lord said to her, “Why do I give this person one virtue and that person another, rather than giving them all to one person? It is true that all the virtues are bound together, and it is impossible to have one without having them all. But I give them in different ways so that one virtue might be, as it were, the source of all the others. So to one person I give charity as the primary virtue, to another justice, to another humility, to another a lively faith or prudence or temperance or patience, and to still another courage. … I have distributed them all in such a way that no one has all of them. Thus have I given you reason—necessity, in fact—to practice mutual charity. For I could well have supplied each of you with all your needs, both spiritual and material. But I wanted to make you dependent on one another so that each of you would be my minister, dispensing the graces and gifts you have received from me” (click here for full text of The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena). How very cunning of the Lord to make us need one another. Do you know what your primary virtue is? Ask! Ask! I need your gifts. The Church needs your gifts. Strive eagerly to know our virtues so that we can serve each other well. Remember that without the virtue of love, all the virtues count for nothing. Yes, above all, we must strive to love as God does, first of all by allowing ourselves to be loved by God. Then we will restore Eden in our souls, and in this way bring the Kingdom of God to earth. May we all do this, and may He bring us all together to life everlasting!