I sometimes write such little blurbs as I have copied below. I wrote this little reflection today in the lead up to Mass. I am wont to let such little blurbs disappear into the ether of a group text chat with my beloved family. Here is a little attempt to preserve this one by posting it here instead. In my Diocese, the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, our Bishop maintains the feast of the Ascension on Thursday, and it is a holy day of obligation. God bless Bishop Lopes for his leadership! It has to be Thursday folks because the following NINE days are the days of the first novena, the days between Ascension Thursday and Pentecost Sunday wherein our Blessed Mother and the Apostles hold up praying and waiting for the promised Paraclete! These days are archetypal spiritual, liturgical, and catechetical realities, not to be moved around at will! Tomorrow marks the beginning of the Novena to the Holy Spirit. The 1st day is the Friday after Ascension Thursday, and the 9th day is the Saturday before Pentecost. I’ve included a link below to the Holy Spirit novena.

God hides himself from our senses that we might find him deep within our wounded depths. This is the only place wherein it is possible to experience the transfiguring truth of Divine encounter. The glory of transfiguration is revealed in Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension-Spiration. We find Jesus in his absence from our senses and his life flows from our soul back into our body, flooding our passions also with the joy of his light. Glory can only enter through the gate of the soul. The soul-gate is the shape of our wounds, mystically merged with his, bearing the same shape of crucifying sins, and flowing with the glory of heavenly water by the power of the Holy Spirit sent from on high by Ascension. In the very act of hiding, of leaving, God bestows his gift of grace, the Paraclete. Jesus says, holding the appearance of bread, “this is my body.” “Would that you might find me herein this mystery of our wounds! Look, I have made all things new!”