St. Mary of the Rosary, Forest Hall 

Each of the roundels/pictures on the stole that Fr. Hall wore on Pentecost Sunday, depicts a scene on the one side from Jesus’ life and on the other from the life of the Church. 

 

From the life of Jesus we have the Nativity, the Feeding of the Five Thousand, giving the keys of the Kingdom to Peter, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection.

 

From the life of the Church we have a scene of martyrdom, of evangelisation, of studying the Gospels in a monastic setting, tending to the sick, celebrating the Eucharist, and gathering all peoples to hear God’s Word.

 

At the top of the stole are the two roundels that unite the two halves: the coming of the Holy spirit on the Apostles at Pentecost and the hands of different peoples reaching across the world in peace and friendship.  This is what we celebrate in our Feast today.

 

With the coming of the Holy Spirit the apostles are emboldened to go out and preach the Good News, news that is heard and understood in all languages. Jesus has told his disciples at the Last Supper (as we heard in our Gospel) that the Spirit will remind them of all that he has done. The role of the Holy Spirit is to remind us of the message of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, and to give us the courage to go out and to share that message with others – a message for all peoples, of all places, and of all times.

 

This overcomes the divisions built by different languages and different races and enables people to live and to work together for the good of all.

 

This stole, then, represents what we are about: we are a people gifted with the Holy Spirit who reminds us of Jesus’ message, of all that he did and said, and who, in that same Spirit, are empowered to go out and to share that message with everyone we meet.

 

Ours is a message not just for me in my little world, but for all people across the world. It is a message of mission.