His Breath is Life for all Life

There are so many persons in convalescent homes, extended care, hospitals, and hospice homebound that are visited by parishioners along with our wonderful members of Marian Visitors-English and Spanish speaking. Throughout the year we visit so many in the throes of illness, the many forms of cancer, heart ailments, or other degenerative diseases from aging and yet our sisters and brothers that suffer continue to fight for their lives—to draw in life-giving breath.

Holidays are especially difficult for our sisters and brothers that are actively dying or really confined and unable to come to church. However, Easter is more of a tender time for many persons who are ill since the seasons of Lent and Easter can bring hope in their suffering. God took on our pain and sins and died for us! Christ did so for all humanity down through the ages including persons suffering today.

And many who visit persons who are homebound, hospitalized, or persons in convalescent homes, say the same thing, “we are honored, blessed” by being with our sisters and brothers at such intimate times in their lives. The visits are humbling experiences as we witness such faith even when the person is going in and out of consciousness.

When I visit persons with varying levels of illness and consciousness and begin to pray the Our Father and/or the Hail Mary it is a blessing to see most persons come to a level of consciousness and mouth the words. Faith glimpses are given as persons who are ill attempt to remember our lifelong prayers and may often become more alert and present for a few moments. The sense of consciousness is even more pronounced at the Anointing of the Sick, and especially at the Eucharist as persons who are often frail show relief as they receive the Lord.

Someone who was unable to receive the Lord due to being on life support brought about the necessity for me to explain to her family our Church teachings about extraordinary means =artificial life. I met with her family during Holy Week, and her son had to make the decision about taking his mother off life support. With his wife they reviewed all the medical options and the teachings of the Church regarding the quality of life and artificial means to sustain life. Mechanical breathing was keeping the mother alive, but not giving her the breath of life.

Our breathing that is taken so much for granted by us-involuntary-function was heightened to a sacred meaning for me by a wonderful elderly parishioner whose limited ability to walk kept her from attending Mass for over two years. When I went to visit her she was weeding in the garden. “I love the outdoors air—the smell of spring all around,” she said. The woman was overjoyed to learn that she could come to her church this Easter and attend Mass since her only daughter was coming home to visit and take her. “It will be a breath of fresh air to be in my church again” she exclaimed.

The breath of fresh air—is the breath of Jesus we hear about in our gospel today—sending to us that we might live life to the full in Him.

“Jesus breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit… blessed are they who have not seen me yet believed.”

Such breath is the vital force, the spirit of a person living in the Lord. And we hear that we have been given gifts through that same breath of Jesus at Baptism and Confirmation. The gift of the Holy Spirit is a call to give back from our lives. Through Christ and the working of the Holy Spirit we were blessed to have many new members enter into the fullness of sacramental life of our Church last week at our Easter Vigil. The wonderful new members of our faith family have come to us to join in our mutual journey to grow in Christ, giving and sharing, loving and witnessing hope in Him.  God’s breath is in all of life. Do we treasure all life and see it as sacred—an exhale of the Divine creative life and presence of the Holy Spirit?

On this Second Sunday of Easter the exhale of Jesus Christ’s life giving breath to the Apostles and us serves as a reminder of the sanctity of all life linked hope, healing and love for us. This weekend is also Sunday of Divine Mercy (please see the announcement for the Chaplet) a reminder that the Lord’s loving forgiveness, His breath of life in each of us through Baptism, is a call to us to share in that forgiveness, hope and life. WE also have the Jubilee Year of Mercy to remind us.