There’s a red roof on Sacred Heart, a good color for a church so named, and a good color to celebrate the presence of the Holy Spirit. I once took a photo of our church from South Philadelphia across the mile-wide Delaware River. The red roof was very clear across the water. And the large facility between it and the river looked good enough in the distance. It is a sewage system that daily deals with the 60 million gallons of raw sewage, most of it from Camden County. But getting into the picture as I snapped it and enhancing it greatly was a beautiful sailboat on the river; its white sails full in the wind. It is a splendid image of the church at Pentecost. Air and wind and breathing help us to sense the presence of the vigor of God in our lives, the gift of the Holy Spirit. A sailboat on a windless ocean is going nowhere as a church without the Holy Spirit. One is reminded of Coleridge’s famous lines in the Ancient Mariner;
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath, nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
But we hear every Pentecost of the “mighty wind” that blew open the locked doors of fear that was crippling the disciples. Very often it is fear that prevents so much good from being done. Come Holy Spirit and give us courage and wisdom and energize our sagging sails.
On Pentecost Sunday, May 15th, here at Sacred Heart, I announced that Jeremy Sullivan of Camden Community House is leaving on Sunday May 22nd to ride his bicycle to California. He is going alone “traveling by air”, the air in his lungs and in the tires of his bicycle. He will carry our neighborhood’s air damaged condition in his heart and prayer. His pilgrimage is a call for remediation.
Come Holy Spirit, fill his faithful heart and enkindle in him the fire of Your love. Send forth Your spirit and renew the face of the earth and especially the face of South Camden.
Amen.(PS. We will add Jeremy’s Journey to our website and we will try to be with him…….wind beneath his wings.)
