I guess I had always felt like May was such a calm month when I was growing up. Sure it was after April but June was the big month, when school was out. Later, May became the month of graduation, a time of transition yet June still held more meaning in that summer would then arrive. It was the promise of summer that I always looked forward to and that was what May had, that promise. Boy how things have changed! A month that only held promise now reflects a new time in my life, full of love and new possibilities.

If anything May has taken on a special status for me, it is now a month that marks a transition. With Mothers’ Day and Sam’s birthday it means there is new meaning in my life, for no longer am I on my own, but now enjoy the love of family with its new prospects and joys. It is almost as if the potential that I always felt in May has been realized, yet I know more joys await. May is a month of possibilities as well as a reminder of realized potential. It combines a sense of meaning and of future hopes.

As I watch others prepare for graduation, I realize that I am not alone in my thoughts. For graduates May reflects a time of completion of one chapter of life, while the excitement of the future builds. Of course nature seems to also exemplify these thoughts as the buds of April become the blossoms of May which will become the green of summer.

More and more, May has become a month that is more than potential and transition, but of new realities with the promise of more in the future. It would seem as if God has the same feelings toward May as it is the month normally associated with the Ascension and Pentecost. With the Ascension of Christ into Heaven and the gift of the Holy Spirit, one chapter in God’s plan has come to an end and a new one begins. The work of God within the Old and New Testament has been completed and fulfilled in Christ and now we live under the reign of Jesus Christ until he comes again. It is the time of the Church, the body of Christ. It is a time of potential and hope.

It is a time of in between, transition. Christ has come, yet has gone to Heaven, but will return and so now we wait. We wait for the future hopes of the Kingdom, of a glorious time. But the time is not just of waiting, not just the end of a chapter; for we also have a realized joy that we live in, this is the time of the Church; a time in which the Spirit guides us and loves us. It is a time of meaning as well as possibilities.

This month of May, as we remember our own transitions, let us rejoice in the gift of the Spirit. Let us commit ourselves to the ministry of those first believers who grabbed onto the possibilities that were presented to them in the Holy Spirit. Let us share the joy of the hope of a future in which God’s Will is assured. Let us live in the meaning of now, yet rejoice in the hope of the future.