Our astronomer friend, Fred, told how he had photographed a cluster of some hundred thousand stars the previous night. Using a thirty-two inch telescope, he had taken photos and then examined the images on a computer. It added up to a spectacle that dazzled this friend so accustomed to looking at the sky professionally.

As he recounted this experience the next morning to some thirty of us gathered for a reunion, Fred’s voice broke with emotion. He spoke of what we all meant to him, people that had remained close to his heart for over thirty years despite his not having seen some of us for that long a time.

Over the past two years, Fred has been struggling with a life-threatening disease that had escaped diagnosis and even now is not amenable to treatment. It has made for a time full of anxiety for him and his wife as they face an uncertain future. But their spirituality has fortified them in this struggle and given them the courage to provide for one another and their two teenage children.

We were gathered together for the most expressive event in our informal weekend reunion, a Eucharistic celebration in the backyard led by one of our number, a Franciscan priest. As the birds sang lustily on the trees overhead, we joined our voices to theirs in praise of God, thanksgiving for God’s gifts, and petition for our many needs.

When it came time for individuals to say what the reunion had meant to them, Fred drew on his experience of the heavens and said to us all, “You are my star cluster.” For a moment he found it impossible to go on but, when he regained composure, he assured us all that we are crucial to him in the most difficult time of crisis he has ever faced.

The liturgy we were celebrating was the feast of Pentecost, the time when the church was born and when the first Christians, though they came from many different parts of the world, all heard the Spirit speaking in their own tongue. This outpouring of the Holy Spirit struck us all as appropriate to our situation.

Many of us, as noted, had not seen one another for three decades. We had scattered far and wide since the graduate school days when we were last together. Some of our spouses, our children, and others had not been part of the original friends and were thus meeting the core group for the first time.

The liturgy revealed even more clearly than we had sensed previously that the bond among us still held strong. We cared about one another perhaps even more than we had dared think. And, though acting without the mighty wind and other signs of the first Pentecost, we were clearly bound together into a single community.

In response to the readings from Scripture, we all sang “Ubi Caritas and Amor, Deus Ibi Est,” (“Where charity and love are, there God is.”) And when we exchanged the kiss of peace with one another, the fervor of feeling was evident. Ever the scientist, Fred announced a rapid calculation: we had just exchanged 551 hugs among us!

In this one event of liturgical celebration, we were able at one and the same time to confirm that our community of friends was still bound together in affection and spiritual intimacy, and to extend those bonds further. We felt ourselves to have sealed friendships and could come away from the experience with memories that would last.

So we have returned from this reunion in Poughkeepsie, New York with new inspiration and a new appreciation of the power of the spirit in our lives. During the weekend that we spent with these old and new friends, we could sense the spirit at work in our lives. Not a few among us have had much to cope with over the last few decades, personal suffering, ailments of children, and disability of various kinds. But everyone showed a resilience that was inspiring to others around them.

There seemed evident a growth in spirit over the years that has made us more finely honed human beings than we were when younger. The varied experiences of life, both those warmly welcomed and those difficult to accept, have worked on us to help mold us into a spiritual maturity that can encourage us for the future.

Richard Griffin