Take the time to absorb within the food of understanding, provided by the reality of feeding. 

Inoffensively, but for understanding the word “Pentecost” means “clarification of things” (that you think you already know).  If I ask you, “Do you know how to make somebody happy?”  Who could say ‘no’ and who could say, ‘yes’, since everybody has problems?

The definition of the word “problem” means “incomplete”; for when resolution comes someone is happy.  Allow me to quote you words that a great man said: “There are many things I could tell you that you would not understand.”  So why say them if you will not understand?  But why can you not understand them?  Is it that they are too complicated or that you lack the invitation of understanding?  This is why the same man said: “Unless I leave you, you will not try on your own.”  But the same man said: “I’m always with you.”  And now he says, “I must leave you, but I’m always with you.”  Isn’t that a cause for confusion?

Simply, “I am with you always, but you won’t take my advice, so when I’m gone I will be close to you in spirit.”  Sort of saying, “You could always call me.”  And then he said, in parable, “I will prove to you that I’m with you always.”  It is like saying, “Go home, sit by the phone.  You could call me and I’ll always be on the line.”  

Now, in the words of wisdom: “Go to the upper room.  Be joyful.”  Now let’s make this simpler: could you imagine a girl waiting for a boyfriend to call, sitting by the phone?  (You’ll notice, we said a girl and not a boy sitting by the phone because that sounds sissy.)  The apostles were the ones entrusted in learning for three years by his side.  But didn’t you know that on Pentecost there were more women and children than men in the room?  So they all sat by the phone, waiting for the call to come. 

How did the call come?

Imagine if you’re sitting in your home and suddenly the curtains start flying and it feels as if there is a storm coming.  But you’re happy for the breeze.  As the curtains move, suddenly a candle representation in the form of tongues of fire comes.  What is a “tongue of fire”?  Why the word “tongues”?  Because you feed by the tongue, your glands are there to absorb and you must see your food.  So this is why we use the expression “candlelight.”

Did you know, for instance, that in electricity a light bulb of sixty watts represents the same lighting as sixty candles?  That’s why they call it “candlelight” measurement.  In schools and public places, they speak about “lumens” for proper lighting.  And everything must be measured in candlelight.  So now, imagine suddenly everybody becomes a candle - becomes the light of the other one.  Picture a whole crowd with a little wick sticking out of their head, lit up as a candle making light for each other.  You are the light of the world, the salt of the world.  So imagine that the tongues, the salt and the light nourished your spirit to feed love in the other one’s heart.

The power of the light: you may notice right now something that doesn’t seem to make sense: A high wind comes in and the candles turn on instead of out.  As the wind blows, it is like those new trick candles that you can’t blow out.  Maybe somebody knows things of Pentecost, because they think they invented those candles, the kinds that don’t go out.  Suddenly everything came to light because they went where they ewer told where the light would come. 

The Gospel, the Scriptures are to be professed in the Cenacle.  The Cenacle has to be brought to the people by the light that the Apostles would bring to the upper room, including the Virgin Mary.  Apostleship is a relation between the apostles, who become the carrier of the people who believe in the light bearing, that they bring in hope to the people of faith, and we say the “people of faith” because they follow ship!

June the 4tth is an anniversary for me, where I was called by the Spirit to enter the Cenacle of St. Vital Church, where Fr. Pat Morand on May 14, 1989 never realized that the spirit took over him.  And I found myself in the upper room.  Pointing to the crowd, where I saw his finger landing on my nose, some thirty seats away from him and I quote his words: “You have put the Holy Spirit on hold long enough!”  That was the beginning of the fire burning in me: first to purify and you must remember that the fire of the Holy Spirit is like the burning bush but also a destroying fire, because anything that is unfit for the spirit is dissolved into the spirit.  It is like Christ himself saying, “I am the friend of the sinner, but the enemy of sin.”  So the Holy Spirit destroys sin by bringing it to light, which explains clearly: the truth will set you free.

“The truth hurts!” man says.  And the Lord says: “It will set you free.”  The truth is facing evil in pride, where the evil in your pride will make you curse the Spirit; which explains when Jesus said, “Anyone who curses the Spirit will never be forgiven.”  Unless you accept the truth as a medicine for holiness, you reject holiness and you walk away from it.

Pentecost Sunday is about truth; not just words of wisdom out of a filthy mouth but the cleansing of the tongues by the tongues of fire is accepting cleansing.  And the truth is a baptism.  The truth is a baptism where Christ has prepared the priests who have opted out of their own lives to receive the power of forgiving you in the name of the Lord.  When you come for such at confession, you become liberated from sin. And if pride remains in you, you never confessed.  Why do people go to confession, if they do? Don’t you see people going in, in front of you or after you?  So isn’t that saying that they are going for the tongues of fire to bring clarity and truth to the wish that you have to be a light-bearer into the lives of those that you have offended or that may have offended you?

Pentecost is not once a year.  It’s every time that you seek to live by the truth for others to know that only then, by the truth, you really regret hurting them.  Therefore, you should be joyful in saying: “I have hurt you.  I’m going to ask God to forgive me for what I did to you.  I’m going to tell the priest that I’ve hurt you.”  You may hear someone say, “That I have to see.”

That’s why that the light of the tongues of fire is for people to see that they mean so much to you that you’re prepared to tell the whole world that you’ve hurt someone, not just a little secret between you and a priest, overshadowed by a vestment of pride that is truly shame because it can’t face the truth.

On this special day, you are invited to the Kingdom of Heaven by the truth, that you must be prepared to lose everything upon earth; not to go to heaven but to be right to those that you’ve hurt.  Then you will find out that heaven has no doors because you will live it upon earth in your heart. 

And I will end with something that I’ve repeated many times in my life: “God knows the truth and that’s all that matters to me.”  Because sometimes, it’s hard for people to believe that you care and that you’ve changed.  Don’t flick the “bic”, call on the Holy Spirit by facing the truth and he will bring you to the burning bush with both of your arms and feet, because you’ll never be harmed to meet the fire of the Holy Spirit.

Reach out to someone today that you know may not want to see you or may not believe that you could ever change.  And just say, “I’m not asking you to answer, I want you to know that I did you wrong and I’m truly sorry in my heart.”  And don’t wait for an answer and say, “Thank you and may god bless you for having put up with me for all this time.  Now I know that you always loved me.”

May God bless you that reads this because this is my call upon you in the name of the Lord.  Forgive me for what they may have done to you. Because to see you happy means that much to me, even if you think I don’t know you.  This is not a letter in the wind hoping that it will land somewhere.  It is addressed to your heart.  That’s why you feel me loving you.

Happy birthday.  You are just being born again, one more time, not as a name of a religion because you’re starting a new life.  I love you.

Roger Poisson