By Fr. Bob Williams
Jesus
spoke to the disciples: "When the Advocate comes, whom
I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who
comes form the Father , he will testify on my behalf. You also
are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.
"I
still have many things to say to you, but you can not bear them
now. When the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into
all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak
whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that
are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is
mine and declare it to you.
"All
that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he
will take what is mine and declare it to you" - John 15:26-27;
16:12-15
"The
day will come" said Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin S.J.
"when, harnessing space, the winds, the tides and gravitation,
we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day,
for the second time in history of the world, we shall have discovered
fire."
In
a sense, the Feast of Pentecost is another opportunity, placed
in the path of believers for discovering and participating in
the ever- present fire that is God's love. Pentecost rounds
out and climaxes the Easter events. All that we have remembered
and celebrated regarding the saving death of Jesus, his resurrection
and ascension to glory, all of these sacred events took place
so that the Holy Spirit might be unleashed upon the world.
Pentecost
calls us to the realization that the centre of all reality,
the innermost heart of all infinity, the love of all the-holy
God has become our centre, our heart, God is ours; God has been
given to us as gift, without reserve. God has made our own the
joy, freedom, knowledge and peace of the divine life.
The
name of this gift is Holy Spirit; the experience of this gift
is fire in our hearts, fire in the very depth of our being.
The experience of this gift is also wind and breath so powerful
as to infuse its recipients with new life. We know this gift
is ours, but we have yet to fully discover it, harness it and
become active participants in the process of human redemption.
On
Pentecost Sunday in 1986, Pope John Paul II issued an encyclical
on the Holy Spirit entitled: On the Holy Spirit In The Life
Of The Church And The World (Dominum et vivifacantem). He saw
this encyclical in relation to two previous encyclicals which
he had written: one on Jesus, The Redeemer Of Man (Redemptor
hominis), and the other on God the Father, Rich In Mercy (Dives
in misericrdia). All three encyclicals, our Holy Father remarked,
take their inspiration from Paul's proclamation to the Corinthians,
"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all."
(2 Corinthians 13:14)
Paul's
words capture the church's faith in the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit and highlight their work in our lives. We are taken in
to the love of God the Father by the grace won for us by Jesus
on the cross and shared with us through the fellowship of the
Holy Spirit dwelling within us. We are united with Jesus, becoming
in him sons and daughters of the Father.
John
Paul emphasized in the first part of his encyclical that the
Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father and the Son. Together
they have sent their Spirit into the world to continue the work
of salvation willed by the Father and accomplished by his Incarnated
Son, Jesus Christ. The pope based his teaching on Jesus' words
at the last supper expressed in John's gospel (chapters 13-17).
Jesus
announced to his apostles that even though he would be leaving
them, the Father would nonetheless send them another Paraclete,
that is another counselor, intercessor, or advocate. '…and
I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate,
to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the
world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows
him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be
in you" (John 14:16-17). One of the primary duties of the
Holy Spirit as counselor and advocate is to "teach you
everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you"
(John 14:26).
Today
there is much confusion about the Christian message, what we
are to believe, and how we are to live. Jesus, as the eternal
Word of the Father, is the truth of our lives, our first counselor.
"Jesus said, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No
one comes to the father except through me" (John 14:6).
Jesus, John Paul II emphasized, taught that the Holy Spirit,
the second Paraclete, guarantees his divine truths. The Holy
Spirit "will help people to understand the correct meaning
of the content of Christ's message. He will ensure that in the
Church there will always continue the same truth which the apostles
heard from their Master" (Dominum et vivficantem, 4).
Since
the church is founded upon and nourished by the preaching and
writing of the apostles, the Holy Spirit in a special way "inspires,
guarantees and convalidates the faithful transmission of this
revelation in the preaching and writing of the Apostles"
(ibid; 5). This assures that the saving message of the gospel
never gets lost in any mere human philosophy or watered down
by human weakness. To lose the truth of the gospel ultimately
would be to lose the word of life - Jesus himself.
So,
the true meaning of Pentecost is the vision of the visible unity
of all Christians. That vision is an imperative of the church
today because it is a sign of the unity to which God summons
the whole human family, a unity that may seem more elusive now
than at any time in history. However, from the day of its birth,
the church has been sent to the whole world, not to impose a
monochrome model of a Christianity shaped by one culture, but
to draw all cultures in to a common home as a people. This celebration
is a reminder that the unity created by the one baptism is of
greater power than the factors that have been allowed to divide
one Christian community from another. Our most ardent prayer
must be that we recognize the unity that baptism has given all
Christians, and that we pray for the grace of the Spirit to
nourish that unity in our lives.
The
unity of Christians is not an end in itself, a still greater
unity lies beyond it, the unity to which God calls the whole
creation. We need to recover this sense of Christian unity as
a sign. It is not merely the awkward merger of differently organized
institutions, but rather a part of the unfolding of God's purpose
that is rooted in the creation itself and was proclaimed in
Jesus's prayer, "that they all may be one".
In
the passage quoted above, from John's gospel, the risen Christ
greets his disciples with the salutation, "Peace be with
you". The disciples were caught up in fear; to them, the
greeting was a direct confrontation of their anxiety. His own
hands and side revealed the cost of the peace he had won for
them. This peace would announce to the world a love that would
characterize them as his disciples. It would be the energy of
his mission carried on through them: "Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, even so I send you".
Yet
that peace, which is the expression of love and unity, has not
characterized the church's history. We find records of conflict
even in the early biblical accounts of the church's life, and
later history shows the various Christian communities following
separate paths, their witness impaired by this fundamental violation
of Christ's will.
The
primary concern of the Holy Spirit is to bring us all into union
with God. The Spirit is the vehicle, the power the that-by-which.
In other words, the Spirit is love. This love informs us that
we have a God whose primary concern is our freedom and whose
chief desire is that we become co-creators with God in the evolution
of the world. This love transform us into fire.
We
must be open to the Spirit's fire, the white heat that will
burn away the defenses and biases and secrets that make up that
false self we have erected in order to survive in this world.
This false self is always looking outward and, therefore, its
search for happiness is moving in the wrong direction. The right
direction is within, into our hearts where the Spirit sits,
awaiting our discovery.
In the name of the
spirit
May you respond to the call
Of your gifts and find the courage
To follow its path
May your outer dignity mirror
An inner dignity of soul.
May you experience each day as
A sacred gift woven around the
Heart of wonder
May you have joy and peace of soul
***
