By Donna Hollis, OFS
National Executive Committee Councilor

The Holy Spirit is always attentive within us; are we listening? 

.                 Donna Hollis, OFS

Relationships are built on open hearts and trust. The Spirit empowers Jesus to be continually present in the world. God’s Spirit conceives Jesus, initiates his public ministry and sustains his Spiritual life. The Spirit is the driving force of who we are and become. Are we attuned to the heartbeat of God? Do we listen to the voice of the Spirit within each of our hearts?

In the Scriptures the Spirit is called the “Ruach”, “Pneuma”, and “Shekhinah” (the wind/breath/ and dwelling.) We must be guided by the Spirit in all that we do. We work with the movement of the Spirit as wind, light and breath to change us and empower us to be agents of change.

What does the relationship between you and the Holy Spirit look like? When we allow the Spirit to fill our lives, we follow the rhythm of the Spirit. We then are guided by the Spirit to become new creatures.

The love of the Spirit will empower us to generate justice and mercy, filling the world with God’s love. We each contribute to the building of the reign of God. It is a task that calls all of us to enable us to understand the nature of God so that we might be able to enter the Transformation.

The Holy Spirit transforms us to become the best that we can be by our love. Love is the force that challenges us to move towards justice and wholeness. Just as Jesus was empowered by the Spirit, now the followers of Jesus are empowered by the same Spirit showing compassion. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you and pray for those who treat you badly. Treat others the way you want them to treat you. (Luke 6:27-30)

The gift of the Spirit is God’s own power to love unconditionally and to transform the world by that power. The Spirit is experienced as the ‘warmth of God’s love that can be felt.’ To enter a relationship with Christ we must let go of ourselves, surrender control of our lives and allow the Spirit to be given to us. The highest form of self possession is the capacity to give ourselves away.

We have a choice – live our own agenda or let go and be taken up into the Spirit’s movement. It will challenge and transform you to become the best that you can be by or love and contribution to others. It is a task that calls all of us.

I want to learn to be who God really created me to be and I think all God wants me to be is who I really am.

https://www.secularfranciscansusa.org/2025/07/listening-to-the-holy-spirit-builds-our-relationship/

(This article originally appeared in the TAU-USA Spring 2025  Issue #115)

Canticle of the Creatures Reflections – Part 1 – page 7

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,

in heaven You formed them clear and precious and beautiful.

Sister Moon and the Stars Say to Dance

by Joe Makley, OFS

National JPIC AnimatorI got to see a lot of the night sky as a boy scout in Florida. Our troop made its tents out of clear plastic off the roll, and we would lay there and watch Sister moon and the constellation Orion tread the great dance as we shared stories before drifting off.

When I was seventeen, I was sleeping outside again, looking up with a good friend who had left home and school with me to try our luck on the road. He said he felt crushed by the night sky, that its vastness and majesty told him he was insignificant, that it made him feel “like a bug.” To be fair, it was a difficult time in the world for sensitive people, as it is today.

I never lost my amazement at the universe, but I spent far more time worrying about problems on Earth. At age twenty-three I was living in a small backpacking tent on a pond in Maine, when the primeval call of a loon was interrupted by jovial laughter coming down the trail. A friend from the South named Albert appeared, a very welcome representative of the life I was leaving behind.

I drove him around Acadia National Park, showing animated pride that an A-list nature preserve was my back yard. We had lobsters on a harbor wharf, and then he asked me if I needed to borrow some money. I realized that he was thinking his friend had fallen on hard times. I reassured him that I was living this way by choice, and I was fine, but I could see he was doubtful.

We met a talkative young man and invited him to join our excursion. He said his name was Josete, and he was Jewish, and was traveling the country searching various places. He had recently come from the northwest, which he felt was beautiful, but diminishing for humans as “the scale is so totally humbling.” He seemed to still be looking for the right place.

After dark we stopped at Asticou Terraces, a garden trail that follows a cliff with steps to a series of overlooks above Northeast Harbor, toniest of the Island’s coastal villages. In the soft moonlight, the well-manicured stones were easy going, and bathed in a heavy scent of balsam fir, arbor vitae, and sea air. Below, the stars were reflected in wavelets and the sloops slip-slopped at their moorings.

Conversation diminished, and stopped altogether as we entered a high, moss-covered granite patio. As we gazed outward, the largest meteor I’ve ever seen streaked across the sky, broke into several pieces, each with their own trail, and left us breathless. For that moment, we were all in the right place, and we knew we were. I felt a deep gratitude, and perhaps an inkling of what Saint Francis meant in those words: “Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars…”

In my life up to that point, I had not really internalized what appeared so obvious to St. Francis. When we gaze at the night sky and marvel at the self-evident hand of an amazing God, we are more than spectators. As we work in the name of Jesus, His co-eternal Son, to bring peace and justice and human dignity to this temporal world, we take our place in the great dance.

https://www.secularfranciscansusa.org/2025/06/sister-moon-the-stars-canticle-of-the-creatures-reflections/