On Sunday, May 19 we will welcome Bishop Matthew to baptize, confirm, and receive new members of our Church. It will be a joyful celebration of Pentecost. Please note that we are combining the 9am and 11am services, and the celebration will begin at 10am. Please bring your friends and family and celebrate with our newest members. The Noble Singers will join our Choir of Men and Boys for the occasion. This year, over 50 people have participated in Pilgrims; some of them are parishioners wanting to renew their understanding of the faith. I am delighted that 29 people, including some choristers, are expected to be baptized, confirmed, or received on Sunday. Three of our youngest members will also make their first holy Communion after a period of preparation with Mo. Turner.
The Holy Spirit is usually depicted in the form of a dove in the scriptures. In the Celtic Church in ancient Britain, the wild goose was also used as an image of the Holy Spirit. In the United States, in our time, a great eagle has also been used in iconography. In all three images, we understand the Holy Spirit as free and powerful, with outstretched wings. It reminds me of that powerful poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins:
God’s Grandeur
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
