Well, peeps! It finally happened. Your Editor forgot to assign today to a blogger. I’m choosing to see it as post-Easter collapse, rather than premature senility.

But grace comes in many forms. Yesterday evening, I opened my e-mail to find a reflection from a parishioner who offered to let me share it as I wished. And while it was not written as a commentary on a particular piece of Scripture, it does resonate with one of the lessons appointed for today. So, with thanks:

But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.  (I Cor 15:35-38)

“He’s not through with you yet!”

These were the customary parting words of my spiritual director, Sister Edna Dolan, each time we came to the end of a session.Sometimes she’d add, “He’s not through with me either, you know—He’s not through with any of us!” “He”, of course, is the Holy Spirit.

While Sister Edna intended these as words of encouragement, I frequently found this pronouncement daunting as
I delved into the depths of the Spiritual Exercises. But eventually I came to have faith in the reality these words convey. I have learned to ‘lean back’ and surrender to their sustaining mystery, especially when I have no rational idea of what is coming next.

Sister Edna comes to mind frequently these days. There she is, eyes twinkling, waving from the door of her residence, as she calls out with her Irish lilt, “He’s not through with you yet!”

— Anne Douglas