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Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
Greetings to you, as we enter the month of June and its promise of summertime!
It is also the month that I use as my start date as your bishop. I was ordained a bishop for the Diocese of Duluth on May 20, 2021. However, right after the ordination, I went to back to Green Bay and packed my things on Memorial Day weekend and then drove the U-Haul to Duluth. The seminarians helped me to unpack, and I came into the Pastoral Office for my first day on the job on June 1, 2021 – two years ago. A lot has happened in those two years.
At the time of my ordination as your bishop, I asked you to join me in reaching out and grabbing on to the wings of the Holy Spirit. I said, “Let’s grab on to the wings of the Holy Spirit as we shout in this moment, ‘I’m all yours. I’m all in.’ As we grab on to the wings of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit is going to lift us up, and we are going to take flight. I have no idea where we are going. I have no idea where we are going to land. But I know this much, that wherever the Holy Spirit takes us as we are clinging to the wings of the Holy Spirit, and wherever that Spirit lands, in the days, weeks and years to come, in that moment, and in that place, that will be the beginning of the next chapter in the Acts of the Holy Spirit in our Diocese of Duluth.”
Over the last two years, we have witnessed the inspiration of the Holy Spirit happening all around us in so many ways and through so many people. Amid the many wing-flappings of the Holy Spirit, we gathered for 50 Let’s Listen sessions, through which the Holy Spirit revealed to us that people in our diocese need the healing, hope, and joy that we can only find in Jesus. From this discernment of the Spirit there emerged the Pastoral Letter, “The Dawn from on High Shall Break Upon Us: Healing, hope and joy in Jesus.” The Holy Spirit only gives us one step at a time, so we have spent these recent months stepping into healing our hurts.
As exciting as it is to hang on to the wings of the Holy Spirit, it can also be frightening and at times confusing. Hanging on to the wings of the Holy Spirit means that we need to surrender to wherever the Spirit is taking us. We need to trust that, wherever we land, it will be a place of abundant healing, hope, and joy.
Sometimes, when the flight is taking a long time or enters territories that are unfamiliar to us, we begin to have feelings of doubt and hesitation. Holy Spirit, maybe I’m not all yours. Maybe I’m not all in. Often, we choose to let go of the wings of the Holy Spirit, so that we can get our two feet on solid ground, only to discover that where we stand has little healing, hope, and joy.
Now is the time to keep hanging on to the Holy Spirit’s wings, not to let go. We are being carried by the Holy Spirit. We are in flight. We are moving. There is wind. There is fire. There is an energy to our flight that we are feeling in our lives, our families, our parishes, and the communities in which we dwell. There is grace. There is love. There is an emerging healing, hope, and joy we have not experienced for some time.
All this not by our doing, but by the being and doing of the Holy Spirit in us, through us, and with us. And imagine, we are not even close to landing wherever the Holy Spirit is taking us! At this point we are inspired to inscribe only the beginning paragraphs of the next chapter of the Holy Spirit in the Diocese of Duluth.
Veni, Sancte Spiritus! Come, Holy Spirit!
Bishop Daniel Felton is the tenth bishop of Duluth.