You want me to sit and do what?

The anticipation is building, can you feel it? No? Any idea what I'm talking about?

Many of us forget that the Church has a liturgical calendar that we celebrate not only at church on Sunday, but hopefully in our daily lives. So what time are we in right now? It's that kind of limbo of waiting that most of us can't stand today. We are in between the Ascension and Pentecost. Take a minute to picture it as it would have been back then. Jesus just ascended into heaven, had promised them a helper that would come. The excitement of the Resurrection was probably wearing off and there must have been a temptation to fear that this was it. I can imagine Peter turning to John and asking him "so what do you think this Holy Spirit is going to look like?" They had no idea, they only knew that they had to wait.

So did they sit around in the upper room and get board? There wasn't facebook, video games or even books really to entertain themselves. You can only play tic tac toe in the sand so many times. But they didn't just sit there. They sought the Lord in prayer.

I can only imagine in those nine days how many times they asked for the Holy Spirit to come. Have you ever asked for something more than once? Ten times? A hundred? They waited in that room for nine days and prayed. To us today, that seems boring. Praying for the same thing over and over is exhausting, draining and discouraging at times. Ever struggled with committing the same sin over and over? Have you prayed for a bad situation to change and it hasn't happened right away? In the midst of the waiting, the disciples had hope. They knew who Jesus was and trusted that if he promised something that it would happen.

From these nine days that the disciples spent in prayer we get what we know today as the novena. Today many people set aside a similar time period for a special prayer intention and ask for the Lord to come and work in their lives. Sometimes it is through the intercession of another saint as well. So during this time between the Ascension and Pentecost what are you asking God for? What is the one thing that you are begging the Lord to do in your life right now? Are you looking forward to Pentecost with the hope of the disciples knowing that God can work in your life in a new way?

If you haven't thought about it yet, now's the time.... It's never too late!