Day 7 Wed May 20th

Prayer

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Let us bow down in humility at the power and grandeur of the Holy Spirit. Let us worship the Holy Trinity and give glory today to the Paraclete, our Advocate. O Holy Spirit, by Your power, Christ was raised from the dead to save us all. By Your grace, miracles are performed in Jesus’ name. By Your love, we are protected from evil. And so, we ask with humility and a beggar’s heart for Your gift of Gentleness within us. Despite the gravity of our sins, O Lord, you treat us with Gentleness. Dear Holy Spirit, give us your power to treat all in our lives with the Gentleness of the Saints.

Reflect on these words

Writing about the second coming of Jesus, St Paul wrote in I Tim 3:1-5, “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days.  People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power.” In 1 Thess 4:16-17, Paul added, “the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.  After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.” Just as the teruah of Jesus on the cross inaugurated a final victory over Satan, so his great teruah at the end of time will consummate that victory in a definitive way.