After Pentecost, What's Next?

After Pentecost, What’s Next?

An epiphany is coming that will overwhelm our most astute beliefs where the prophecies of the past will soon become the present and overtake all of us.  Once the Holy Spirit is appropriately accepted within each of us the future of our adherence to God’s bidding will become the presence of His forgiveness for the world.

This is not a remake of the reason Christ came to redeem us, it is a fulfillment of the promise our Father said he would;  “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.”  (Gn 3: 15).  Of all we just celebrated from Lent through the Ascension of the Risen Christ to the answer of his prediction about the Holy Spirit coming to us;  “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it.  But you know it, because it remains with you, and will be in you.”  (Jn 14: 16 - 17).  

Nearly 2,000 years ago, the promise of the Father, spoken through Jesus, is the very mandate that we who have received this promise must go out and baptize through our own sacrament the good news to the whole world.  It is the most immediate requirement God expects of all of us once anointed through His grace and sent on the path of an epiphany of our own.  

From eons ago, at the very moment of human creation, the Holy Trinity foresaw our present condition which without their interference would lead all of mankind to eternal disaster.  The Easter season, which in essence continues throughout the year, is the prime weapon we will need to accomplish this task our baptism will require of us.  

There never has been a time in history like the present collapse of human dignity we all are experiencing today.  Where is God, many may ask?  Why has he allowed so much turmoil within so many minds of people who have lost touch with God?  

Many of the answers will be found in the Apocalyptic literature, which by the way is not hyperbole, but a certain prediction of what will occur on earth regardless of what we may do.  Why?  Because mankind has fallen away from what our Creator wanted to give us, but the temptations of the world have given us pleasure when we were asked to be responsible for the grace God gives us.  It is our own doing that is bringing about our loss.  We may blame the Satanic influence that has become the attraction to worship other gods and become idol worshipers.  However, if we maintain the blessedness of God who never lost his love for his own creatures the final collapse of our world would not become a reality.  “If my people, upon whom my name has been pronounced, humble themselves and pray, and seek my presence and turn from their evil ways, I will hear them from heaven and pardon their sins and revive their land.  Now my eyes shall be open and my ears attentive to the prayer of this place.”  (2 Chr 7: 14 - 15).

 Our task, as baptized Christians, is to answer the very quest of God as seen in 2nd Chronicles, we could change the course of time predicted.  However, our future, which is now, has been written and will because of mankind’s total disbelief be part of the upcoming disaster.  But, we still must not bury our heads in the sands of time, but continue to do our part to save the multitude of weak humans and bring them back to God.  This is our mandate to answer and will be judged on what we could have done and refused to do.

Ralph B. Hathaway