Tilting at Windmills

If you travel north from Missouri through Iowa and follow the Avenue of the Saints (yes, that's what it is really called), you will reach a field of windmills just before you enter Minnesota.

The windmills look nothing like those of Don Quixote (Don Quijote en espanol). They are enormous . . . three or four times taller than the trees or barns or telephone poles that dot the landscape beneath them. Their arms and bodies are made of strong metal, but they respond to the wind with great assent.

Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.

While this new generation of windmills embraces the wind (changing that energy into useful electricity), there are always one or two that stand sadly still.

And they look all wrong, like someone needs to grab the blade and give it a spin to get it going. And then there are the ones that have no arms at all. Just a body, lifeless except for the stubborn vertical frame that stands against the wind and is immovable. Proud, yet completely useless.

We are like those windmills. As Catholics, we come at the end of a long line of saints. We stand tall at the end of the Avenue of Saints. Together, we receive with great joy the Wind of the Holy Spirit, and we let it move us. And when that powerful Spirit of God comes upon us, it passes through us and becomes something useful to those who need the power of God. Like wind-power that is changed to electricity, God passes through us and changes the lives of others.

But the Catholic who refuses to move, who keeps those arms still despite the power of the Holy Spirit that is his through Baptism and Confirmation (and kept alive and blowing strong through all the Sacraments) . . . that Catholic is like the sad one or two that stand still. Silent. Almost as though they were dead, even as the Wind of God continues to blow steady and strong.

Don't be that one.