Branching Out: The Official Blog by Renew International

The Sounds of Mercy

Written by Peter Yaremko | May 15, 2016 11:00:18 AM

The prophet Elijah sought God in windstorm and earthquake and fire. But he heard God only as a “still, small voice” (1 Kings 19:12). In Psalm 46, we are advised to “Be still, and know that I am God.”
 
But after more than a week of prayer in the upper room, the apostles were visited by the Paraclete, who came like a wind that shook the place where they were hiding and poured out tongues of flame.
 
The apostles, their souls now on fire, boldly went out into a perilous marketplace to announce the good news of God’s love. Jesus had fulfilled his promise that “the Spirit of truth” would come to guide them to a new understanding of God’s redeeming mercy.
 
“Now they would no longer be ashamed to be Christ’s disciples,” Pope Francis said in his Pentecost homily last year. “Filled with the Holy Spirit, they would now understand ‘all the truth,’ that the death of Jesus was not his defeat but the ultimate expression of God’s love.”
 
Our prayer today:
 

Holy Spirit of Truth,
grant us the same courage you gave to the apostles so we, too,
may be bold witnesses to the Father’s loving mercy.

 
Peter W. Yaremko, a former journalist, is the owner of Executive Media, Inc. and is a specialist in executive communications. He attends St. Peter the Apostle Church in Provincetown, Massachusetts and blogs at peterwyaremko.com/paradise_diaries.