Do You Dish Out Demands or Inspire?
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“We too are called to testify in the Holy Spirit, to become paracletes, comforters. The Spirit is asking us to embody the comfort he brings. Let us remember that closeness, compassion and tenderness are God’s “trademark”, always. The Paraclete is telling the Church that today is the time for comforting.” – Pope Francis
I found this quote from Pope Francis as I was praying on the morning of Pentecost. A few months ago, I felt a distinct call to comfort the sorrowful in a new ministry. God was moving me into a phase of life where “comforting” was my call.
Coincidentally, Pope Francis points to that universal call to be comforters on Pentecost. We live in a hurting world that needs comfort more than ever before. So often, we are not met with comfort, compassion, and tenderness when we are hurting. We are met with willfulness and demands on us from others, usually those close to us.
People still want what they want from us and that doesn’t change with any hurting we go through. My experience has been that the world expects us to keep pushing through and to suffer in silence for survival. The world doesn’t want to hear about or even see our struggles, and so we keep them to ourselves and they eat away at us. The world just wants us to be high-functioning and energetic people that "give me what I want, the way I want, when I want it." No wonder most of us are struggling with stress, anxiety, loneliness, a lack of joy, and fatigue. We feel the demands of flesh and rarely the comfort of the Spirit, because most of us are living in the flesh and not leaning into the Spirit.
Case and point: I was shopping this past weekend and saw a young woman my age I had went to school with. She thanked me for posting something comforting on Facebook about infertility, and in a cracking voice said, “No one knows how broken you feel.” Hopefully in a moment, I was able to return some comfort, but she quickly scurried away. It signaled a real truth in our world: Few know. Few understand. Few empathize. Even in our own Church, we are often carrying heavy things no one knows about.
This has been my experience of the world and maybe your's too. Maybe it’s time to be a more comforting presence in that world… a paraclete, as Pope Francis says. Maybe it's time for less demands of the flesh and more comfort and compassion of the Spirit. How will our world ever change for the better without that?
May Pentecost will inspire that in you like it did for me.
Katie Zalany lives in Cleveland Ohio. She is a Third Order Secular Franciscan (OFS), spiritual director, benefits/wellness leader, certified health and life coach, and volunteer. She is the creator of the ministry Women in Waiting | Made for Fruitfulness and is a published author. Her writing interests and focus areas include Gospel reflections, Franciscan spirituality, women's spirituality, prayer, and integration of faith and daily living.
