Stacked for Pentecost

By Fr Gerard Whiteford SM

At all major international airports, aircraft waiting to land are ‘stacked’. Inbound aircraft will, quite literally ‘be stacked’ at different altitudes waiting for runway space to become available. Imagine you have a pack of playing cards, and as you take one from the bottom and place it on a table, the card directly above the previous card now becomes the bottom card, and so on. So at airports there are sections of airspace called “stacks”; Quite often, as a passenger, you have the distinct feeling of going round in a big circle. You are! These days between the Sunday of Ascension and Pentecost remind me of the ‘stacking space’. We are getting there, however, the descent is slow. The Spanish mystic, Teresa of Avila has a prayer that might be of help as you make descent. The singer/songwriter John Michael Talbot has put the words of this prayer quite beautifully to music.

Christ has no body now but yours
No hands, no feet on earth, but yours
Yours are the eyes through which He looks
Compassion on this world

Yours are the feet with which He walks
To do good
Yours are the hands
With which He blesses all the world
Yours are the hands
Yours are the feet
Yours are the eyes
You are His body
Christ has no body now but yours
No hands, no feet on earth, but yours
Yours are the eyes through which He looks
Compassion on this world

Christ has no body now on earth
But yours

See YouTube - St Theresa's Prayer
by John Michael Talbot