Preparing for Pentecost...

Ascension day just behind us, Pentecost just before us reminds me of something helpful I read in Ronald Rolheiser's Seeking Spirituality: Guidelines for a Christian Spirituality for the 21st Century. We should try and not to forget the journey from Good Friday to Pentecost - the Paschal Cycle. Rolheiser puts it like this:-

Good Friday: 'the loss of life - real death'

Easter Sunday: 'the reception of new life'

The Forty days: 'a time for readjustment to the new and for grieving the old'

Ascension: 'letting go of the old and letting it bless you, the refusal to cling'

Pentecost: 'the reception of new spirit for the new life that one is already living'

Or in other words...

'Name your deaths'

'Claim your births'

'Grieve what you have lost and adjust to the new reality'

'Do not cling to the old, let it ascend and give you its blessing'

'Accept the spirit of the life that you are in fact living'

This cycle is something we can engage in daily in reflection. Rolheiser suggests different areas that represents a death, whether that be our youth, wholeness, our dreams, our honeymoons even certain ideas of God and the Church.

Today is Ascension Day - Rolheiser would have us reflect on what we are clinging onto that we need to let go of as we prepare for Pentecost.