But humans have learned from experience since the earliest days of history, that none of these things can give us ultimate satisfaction, ultimate meaning. Yet still, we find ourselves in headlong pursuit of these things, setting ourselves up for inevitable failure each time.
Was it Saint Augustine who said something like “there’s a God shaped hole in the center of each of us, and the only thing that can fill it is God?.”
A moment's reflection can reveal the fatal flaw in the promises made by the world: The "world: is bounded by time and space, so by definition there can nothing outside that time-space box, nothing beyond death, nothing "ultimate": The world of the senses is all that we get. So naturally, anything that the world promises cannot be "ultimate" but only passing. At the last supper, Jesus reminds us, that we are not of this world, and that its promises will never be fulfilled, never make us who we are meant to be. This is why Augustine wrote that God has made us for himself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in him. Everything else is empty promises.Today is Pentecost Sunday, when we celebrate that the disciples were “filled with the Holy Spirit.“ They
We are Easter people. Christ has already risen from the dead, and we have already risen with him. The promise is that he will come again to finish the job. But this again is hardly an empty promise.
What can ultimately fill our yearning hearts? We know the answer, and so on this feast of Pentecost we pray:
“Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful!”