Play Your Holy Card

(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Mass-Blog-for-Pentecost-2025.mp3)

Anyone paying their respects at the wake of a friend or relative has the opportunity to come away from it with a holy card. It’s customary to take one of these after signing your name in the family’s registry of visitors.

When you get home from the next wake you attend, before putting that card in a drawer with others you’ve been collecting, take some time to study it. The family gave a lot of thought to matching the saint and the prayer on it to the words and actions of their loved one. It’s an opportunity to imagine the peace of the Holy Spirit descending on him or her before your eyes, right before sharing with you their own last words.

Pentecost offers an opportunity to plan your own Holy Card. Which saint best channels the Holy Spirit’s peace into your heart as Jesus did for his disciples? Sunday’s Gospel reading from John offers the blessing that started their journeys and those of all the saints who followed in their footsteps:

“Peace be with you,” Jesus tells them. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20:19-23)

St. Francis of Assisi appears on many holy cards, along with the prayer most often credited to him—about making us channels of God’s peace. Pentecost Sunday’s first reading (Acts 2:1-11) reminds us how Christ’s disciples—once they were filled with the Holy Spirit—began channeling God’s truth in all languages so it could be understood by all people. God’s truth is a universal language that’s translated via our actions—actions as diverse as holy cards. Paul tells us:

There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same Lord; there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone.

The psalms of David, Jesus’ earthly ancestor, are also popular choices for holy cards. Like us, this imperfect King spent his life struggling to overcome his sinful nature so he could know and do God’s will. 

David’s psalms desire a peace that offers shelter from enemies, and ultimately, from death. Psalm 23 has brought peace to people waging similar struggles against humanity’s universal enemy: Fear.

The LORD is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

We who tend to be more like David in his sins than Jesus in his virtues are called to channel St. Francis’ last words so we may conquer the foibles David fought and Jesus conquered:

“I have done what was mine to do; may Christ teach you what you are to do. Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.”

David’s last words (2 Samuel 23:2-5) are worthy of a holy card, too, as they spell out what he sought and finally foresaw: the coming of a King from his bloodline who would channel God’s Holy Spirit via a new covenant. That covenant would bring new life as Jesus breathed his last words on his disciples before ascending to the realm awaiting us:

“You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

Saints in the making throughout history followed them to those ends. Their testimony translates into the kinds of words and deeds documented on the backs of their holy cards. What will yours say?

–Tom Andel