Daily Reflection
June 8, 2025

There was this heartwarming and quite often hilarious movie a few years back, and perhaps
many of you have seen it, the movie was ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’. In the movie, a family man,
Gus Portokalos from Greece, raised his Greek family in the United States to live and to be proud of
all things Greek. In fact, he was so proud of his Greek culture, he believed that every single English
word had its origin from a Greek word. 
 

Well Gus wanted his children to marry only someone from Greece, and so he faced a
dilemma, when one of his Greek daughters, Toula, finds herself in love with a White Anglo Saxon
Protestant man, named Ian Miller. Goodness Gracious, Saint Ignatius! So, after some really
touching, funny, and heart struggling real compromises on everyone’s part, love wins out, and Toula
and Ian marry. 

As two different families, different as night and day, come together, despite what separated
them, the beauty of love shines forth. YAY! Gus, the bride’s father, at his daughter and new
son-in-law’s reception, offers the following loving toast to the couple: [I will try to do this, with your
indulgence, in the best Greek accent I can muster. Prayers please prayers!]
 

“You know, the root of the word Miller is a Greek word. Miller come from the Greek word ‘milo,’ which is mean ‘apple,’ so there you go. As many of you know, our name, Portokalos, is come from the Greek word ‘portokali,’ which mean ‘orange.’ So, okay? Here tonight, we have, ah, apple and orange. We all different, but in the end, we all fruit.”
 

In the end, ‘we all fruit’. As the Holy Spirit descends this Pentecost Day, and the winds of
that love blows among all of us, calling us all to be home for one another, we feel our hearts awaken
to how God has made us all blessedly different, with different gifts of the spirit, special and unique,
but made us one. One community. One body of Christ. 
 

And so out of our reading from the Acts of the Apostles today we learn that the Spirit given
to the apostles at this Pentecost feast and to us at our Baptism and Confirmation enables us to
communicate “the mighty acts of God” as a way of uniting and of overcoming our differences. 
We all are community. We all are one in the Spirit. We all fruit. Saint Paul, in our second
reading today claims that the Holy Spirit has descended upon each of one of us, enlivening and
giving us gifts to build up one another as the body of Christ. Now no one’s, no one’s gift is better
than then others. All the gifts given when used, and used in love, for the sake of one another, for
the building up of us all, for human flourishing, despite our differences, will bring us all together as
one, as family. I mean really how great is that! We all fruit!
 

Jesus comes to us, and the spirit of his love gives us courage, as he shows us that he is one
with us, he too has the wounds of life to reveal, and with him we can find our peace, the peace and
the power, as fruit together, to share the good news of a love that has a ‘together power’, a power
found in one another as community, a power to overcome our differences, to overcome our hate, to
vanquish all violence, to vanquish all division. 
 

Yes, we are all different, but we, with the Holy Spirit alive in us and among us, we realize ‘we
all fruit’. And so dear friends, may the fruit you are be turned into the wine of God’s mercy and
compassion, the Spirit of light, and of life, and of love. And indeed, as we share these gifts of the
Holy Spirit given to us, the fruits of the spirit alive in us, with one another and for our world, who
knows, who knows, WHO KNOWS, what divine wind, will now blow.