Was That Dinner, or the Holy Spirit?

Once when I was sitting in my yard, reading a book, a large, beautiful, white dove landed in the yard of the family from Vietnam living next door.

Later I told the wife from Vietnam about the dove. I said, “In the Catholic Church, the dove is the symbol of the piece of God we call the Holy Spirit!”

The wife from Vietnam answered, “Peter, when you see a white dove flying, you say, ‘There goes the Holy Spirit!’ In Vietnam, when people there see a white dove flying they say, ‘There goes dinner!’”

One of the very interesting stories in the Catholic Church concerns how a man referred to as “Fabian the Manure Shoveler” became Pope.

In the year 236, the Pope named Anterus had just been killed by the soldiers of the government of Rome. The Christians of Rome gathered to elect a new Pope.

A short distance away, Fabian, the slave of a Roman prince, was buying cow manure for his master’s gardens, and shoveling the manure into his wagon.

As the Christians of Rome prayed for a sign from God which would tell them who to elect to the position of Pope, they saw a large white dove fly from the roof of a building, down the street and land on the head of Fabian, as he shoveled manure!

The crowd took this as a sign from the Holy Spirit. They ran down the street and grabbed the slave Fabian and elected him Pope!

Perhaps the dove was the Holy Spirit, and not dinner. Fabian was one of the great Popes of the Church.