MAKING CONNECTIONS One of the great privileges of having worked in schools for such a long time is the treasure chest of people who take you into their lives.

After nearly 25 years of teaching and administration in two Jesuit colleges, I count myself richly blessed in the friendships I have forged in both Melbourne and Sydney. Many of these have demonstrated to me that ‘a friend knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten how it goes’.

In mid-February I travelled to Sydney for the funeral of Father Charles Fraser, a friend for much of his Jesuit life to so many people associated with St Ignatius’ College, Riverview. He had that rare gift of being able to turn strangers into friends, and he understood well that to have a friend one must be one. Countless students would have taken this message to their hearts from this masterful, albeit peppery, teacher.

Funerals have a way of connecting or reconnecting us to friends and others we have not seen for some time. On three occasions at least I was much moved by people I met when farewelling Charles Fraser. After the Mass, I was standing near the hearse, surrounded by several dozen concelebrating priests. A young boy in Riverview uniform emerged from the crowd to speak to me. ‘Hello, Father Gleeson’, he said, ‘my name is Jack Needham. My parents said to tell you they miss you.’

Everyone of us carries a story deep within us. It is our sacred ground. Sometimes it is appreciated, sometimes it is misunderstood, sometimes it is misrepresented. In Jack’s case, I had never met him before, but I had been praying for him for several years.

Jack’s mother Kate had emailed me a few years ago asking for prayers, because a brain tumour showed up in him during a routine CT scan after a serious accident. Now here he was in his second year at Riverview coming forward with confidence to talk to me and tell me I was valued. I was much moved to connect with Jack, to reconnect with his wonderful family, and recall that I was part of their story.

In another quite different encounter I met Lyn and Ian Chapman. Every school community needs parents like the Chapmans. Not only do they entrust their children to you – in this case two excellent young men—but they also involve themselves entirely in working to develop the school. It was a delight to reconnect with them.

Indeed, I was able to tell them honestly that I thought of them very often. Positioned strategically on my desk at home is a cushion they gave me as a gift a few years ago. It is inscribed: I ONLY PLAY GOLF ON DAYS THAT END IN ‘Y’. While the relevance of these words eludes me, I think fondly of the Chapmans each time that cushion catches my eye.

From the funeral at North Sydney the cortege travelled via the College to the Northern Suburbs cemetery. After the prayers at the graveside, which I was privileged to lead, I continued to catch up with people I had not seen for some time. One such person was Peter Ramsay. We greeted each another warmly and, after some brief conversation, I happened to look down and notice that we were almost standing on his brother John’s headstone in the Jesuit plot. It was a poignant moment for both of us.

John and Peter were very close brothers in a wonderfully close family, and I had the privilege of being a dear friend of John’s for many years. Our stories of connection and reconnection weave their way through the tapestry of our lives. ‘God made man because he loves stories’, the great Jewish writer Elie Wiesel once said.

One of my favourite feasts in the Church’s calendar is Pentecost. I love this event because it celebrates the transformation of a weak-kneed and wobbly group of disciples into a spirited and courageous team of apostles. Who would have thought that this timorous lot, who went into hiding after the events of Easter, could be leaders of such force in the emerging Church? Nothing but the coming of the Holy Spirit could have effected the change in these men.

To me the Holy Spirit is the great connector, the glue in the relationship that is the Trinity, the completer. It is the Spirit who comes at Pentecost to carry on the work of Jesus. It is the Spirit Paul is talking about when he challenges the Philippians to ‘have the same mind and attitude as Christ Jesus’. Just as it is the Spirit who connects and completes the work of Father and Son, so the Spirit connects us, binds us together inside, and links us to others in sometimes surprising friendships and relationships.

I read recently of human life described as a spider web. ‘If you touch it anywhere, you set the whole thing trembling … The life that I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place and time my touch will be felt.’

Pentecost celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit into our lives, the Holy Spirit who is the trembling in our spider web of life.