Life in the Spirit

What is the difference between a ‘spiritual man’ and a man who is not? The solemn feast today we call Pentecost celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God. God creates as God; He creates as Spirit everything that is new and fresh, free and vital, at once tender and strong – the mystery of love – which even in the natural world is always the most intimate mystery. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God Father and Son, by nature lovers, hence, the Spirit of perfect love between them. Through Him, Mary conceived Jesus in the flesh, This we now know as the mystery of the Incarnation, Jesus both divine and human nature in the one Person of the Son of God, Savior of humankind fallen into sin.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of grace: God within us as our anointing and healing, our guarantee of heaven, comforter, advocate, our freedom and sonship, life and peace, our holiness and unity. All this we call the Spirit. In the Gospel of today, Jesus, after breathing on His disciples said; "Receive the Holy Spirit" (Jn 20:22). Pentecost reveals that this Spirit is not only given to man, but that man’s acceptance of the Spirit is itself the Spirit’s gift; that this communication of the Spirit is no more a sporadic breathing as it was when Jesus promised to send Him, but an irrevocable happening as the sacrament of Christ’s grace in the Spirit, who is not only promised but given as the "Church", the mystical Body of Christ. In her the Spirit lives both in prudent laws and in awakenings to new life. He is the Spirit of every individual who possesses Him and is guided by Him, and who refuses by the grace of God to conform to legalistic mediocrity.

How do we know that a person possesses the Spirit? By their fruits we will know. The fruit of the Spirit is summed up in the entirely personal qualities of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and control. The authentic conception of the Spirit arising out of the new revelation in Christ departs from the idea that the Spirit’s work is chiefly to be seen in occult happenings like interpreting dreams, predicting the future, or speaking in tongues, and looks for that work instead in the highest qualities of personal being. When St. Paul discusses spiritual gifts, he does indeed still recognize the more ecstatic charismata, but the higher gifts are personal and the most excellent is love (I Cor 12:31). Elsewhere, St. Paul contrasts with the works of the flesh (immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party hostility, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and every depravity flesh is heir to).

The saints spoke of the love of God as not just a response to God’s love for them but somehow the very movement of God’s love within them. In this movement, the Holy Spirit bestows His seven gifts of wisdom, knowledge, understanding, fortitude, fear of the Lord, piety and charity. In prayer, let us daily call on the Holy Spirit, the stern adversary of sin, the Spirit of the Church, the unity of the "Body of Christ", the secret power of transformation within us that presses forward to the resurrection of the glorified body and the transfiguration of the world. "Come, Holy Spirit, fill our hearts, and enkindle in us the fire of your divine love."

Pentecost Sunday, John 20:19-23.