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The Holy Spirit and the two vistas

13 Monday May 2024

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View from a hike on Hogback Trail in Lathrop State Park, CO.

The Holy Spirit opens vistas both before us and within us. 

Vistas, those wide expansive views, are part of what has been drawing me increasingly out west on vacation.  My home of East Tennessee is, I believe, one of the most beautiful places on God’s green earth but one thing it lacks are the vistas found in the western United States.  In a vista one can see for miles and miles and the sky opens before you!  Vistas and their sweeping views help to put all things and even ourselves in perspective.  When I gaze on the expansiveness of a vista, I hear an echo of a similar expanse within my very soul.  Wonder is easily born in those moments when one is caught up in the view of a vista. 

The Holy Spirit, the Advocate promised by the risen Jesus, continually opens every Christian disciple and the Church herself to the great vista before us which is the coming of the Kingdom of God.  The Church cannot stay behind locked doors.  This is not the mandate given us nor is it where we belong.  The Church must go forth into the world as Jesus has instructed us.  Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature. (Mk. 16:15) 

The Church goes forth to proclaim the good news confidently because she knows that behind and undergirding the horizon of the world is the greater horizon of the Kingdom of God.  It is on this greatest of vistas that the eyes of the Church are set and to which her heart is drawn.  Hope is given by the Holy Spirit who has been poured forth and who dwells in our heart, who reminds us that we are indeed sons and daughters of God and who gives us the assurance to call God “Abba” (Rom. 8:14-17).  We proclaim the good news in the confidence of children of God knowing the truth of the Kingdom!    

The Holy Spirit also opens us to the vistas found within our very selves and to their expansive views. 

The topic I wrote on for my licentiate in sacred theology was a comparison of our modern understanding of what constitutes the human person and the concept of the human person as expressed by St. Augustine in his writing of The Literal Meaning of Genesis.  Through the comparison I came to realize how truly anemic and limited in some very critical ways our modern secular understanding of the human person is.  Modern secular definitions of the human person are limited because – through a whole development of historical-societal occurrences and trends in philosophical thought – we have boxed ourselves in.  We have isolated ourselves from any hint of a connection with the transcendent as well as increasingly isolating ourselves from authentic connection with one another.  This anemic understanding of the human person is, I believe, at the heart of many of our current societal ills and confusions. We have forgotten who we are, in whose image we are made and for what purpose we are made.  We have forgotten and cut ourselves off from seeing our own expansiveness. 

We have lost sight of our own inner vistas. 

The concept of the human person found in St. Augustine’s The Literal Meaning of Genesis on the other hand, does not box us in.  In fact, it does the exact opposite.  Where modern understanding locks the human person in a box, the thought that St. Augustine expresses in his writing on Genesis locates us in a columned courtyard (my image) which stands open, by design, both to the sky above as well as to all of the surrounding vistas.  For Augustine, we are hardwired for authentic and true connection both with God and with one another.  Not so for the modern secular understanding of the human person. 

It seems to me that a critically important task for the Christian disciple in our world today is to free ourselves from/step out of the box of this modern concept of the human person which we have all inherited.  It is fair and just to acknowledge the good found in this modern inheritance (and there is good) but we do not have to be imprisoned nor limited by the constraints also found within this inheritance. 

The Holy Spirit is the prime mover in this task.  We have received the Spirit who is the very love between the Father and the Son. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it.  But you know it, because it remains with you, and will be in you. (Jn. 14:16-18)

Truth cannot exist alongside illusion and falsity and the “Spirit of truth” has been given us and even dwells within us.  The “world” – human pride and error – does not recognize the Spirit because the Spirit is not constrained by its limits and the Spirit has been given to us to continually set us free from whatever would seek to bind and imprison us as well as deny our dignity – whatever would box us in.  The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. (Jn. 3:8)    

Ask the Holy Spirit to strip away any and all internal illusions of isolation and separation.  It is time to move beyond the sad and anemic concept of the human person found in modern secularism.  Pray the Holy Spirit to liberate you and bring you into a living and authentic relationship with God and with others – not an isolating box but a columned courtyard open both to the wonder of the sky and the surrounding vistas! 

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.  For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, Abba, “Father!”  The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we also may be glorified with him.  (Rom. 8:14-17)

We, who have received the Holy Spirit, are called to keep our eyes fixed on the great vista before us which is the coming Kingdom of God as well as be ever aware and attentive to the expansive vistas that God has placed within us. 

The two vistas are connected: if not even one and the same.   

Invoke the Holy Spirit!

20 Saturday May 2023

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“Invoke the Holy Spirit!” 

I recently heard these words offered at a symposium on the priesthood and they ring true – not just in the life of the priest but in all of what it means to be Christian and to be Church. 

If there is a “theme” in my own spiritual journey over the past few years it is that of a growing awareness of the Holy Spirit and relationship with the Holy Spirit – trust in the Spirit, awareness of the Spirit, crying out to the Holy Spirit, delight in the Holy Spirit, fear of wounding my relationship with the Holy Spirit, awe and wonder at the movement of the Holy Spirit, learning to rejoice in that which the Spirit rejoices in and allowing the Holy Spirit to lead me into truth. 

I love the Holy Spirit. 

The days between Ascension and Pentecost are a privileged time to receive the Holy Spirit as a welcome guest in our hearts.  The words, “welcome guest,” are key here I believe.  The Holy Spirit is not an automatic in the life of the Christian and should never be thought of in such a manner.  Nor is the Spirit passive.  The Holy Spirit chooses and is active.  Although the Holy Spirit can and does work through very limited means (I use myself in my priesthood as an example here), the Spirit chooses how to move, where to move and where to abide and in what degree of fullness.  The Holy Spirit will not abide in fullness with neither sin nor duplicity. 

In grace we must always strive to make of our hearts a worthy place to receive this “welcome guest”.  How so?  Striving to keep our will and actions sincere, honest, pure and humble.  Remaining focused on Christ as Lord and Savior and showing reverence to the image and likeness of God found in every person. 

A sure way to experience the withdrawal of the Holy Spirit is to try to use another person in any way, shape or form.  This was an abiding sin of the rich man in the parable that our Lord gave us of the rich man and the poor beggar Lazarus.  Even in the torment of afterlife; the unnamed rich man, rather than rejoicing in seeing the poor beggar Lazarus resting now in the bosom of Abraham, wanted to use the very one whom he had ignored and stepped over during his life to be sent on an errand for him to warn his brothers.  The rich man is denied.  One wonders what would have happened if the rich man had rather said, “I rejoice in seeing Lazarus, whom I now recognize as a brother and who knew such pain in life, now resting in the peace of God’s love.”  Some scholars suggest that the sin of Judas (who believed Jesus was the Messiah but who felt Jesus wasn’t acting swift or sure enough in his view) was to try to force the hand of Jesus to show his messiahship, in other words – use him, by handing him over to the authorities.  In John’s account of the Last Supper, we are told that Satan enters into the heart of Judas and that he departs into the darkness of night.  To use another while neither respecting nor reverencing the image of God in which that person is made is a sin that God will not abide.

In all things, we must continually strive, by avoiding that which grieves the Holy Spirit and doing that which pleases the Holy Spirit, to make of our hearts truly a place of welcome for this most honored of guests! 

I want to end this post by sharing a reflection by Cardinal Cantalamessa given in his book, “The Holy Spirit in the Life of Jesus’.  The quote is long but I share it because these words helped to enliven my heart to a deeper awareness of the Holy Spirit.  Cardinal Cantalamessa writes,

But an unbidden question springs to mind: why the long interval between the moments when Jesus received his anointing in the Jordan and when, on the cross and at Pentecost, the outpouring of the Spirit occurred?  And why does St. John the Evangelist say that the Holy Spirit could not be given while Jesus “had not yet been glorified”?  St. Irenaeus gives the answer: the Holy Spirit had first to become accustomed to dwelling among human beings; he had, so to speak, to be humanized and historicized in Jesus, so as to be able, one day, to sanctify all human beings from within their human condition while respecting the times and modes of human behavior and suffering.  “The Holy Spirit,” he writes, “descended upon the Son of God, made the Son of man, becoming accustomed (adsuescens) in him to dwell and rest among the human race, so as to be able to work the Father’s will in them and renew them from their old habits into the newness of Christ.”  Through Jesus, the Spirit is able to make grace “take root” in human nature; in Jesus who has not sinned, the Spirit can “come down and remain” (John 1:33), and get used to staying among us, unlike in the Old Testament where his presence in the world was only occasional.  In a sense, the Holy Spirit becomes incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, even if in the case of “becomes incarnate” means something different, i.e., “comes to dwell in a physical body.”  “Between us and the Spirit of God,” writes Cabasilas, “there was a double wall of separation: that of nature and that of the will corrupted by evil; the former was taken away by the Savior with his incarnation (and, we may add, with his anointing) and the latter with his crucifixion, since the cross destroyed sin.  Both obstacles being removed, nothing further can now impede the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on all flesh.”

          The same author explains how the wall of separation constituted by nature, that is, by the fact that God is “spirit” and we are “flesh,” came to be removed.  The Savior’s human nature, he says, was like an alabaster vessel which in one way contained the fullness of the Spirit, but in another way prevented this perfume from spreading abroad.  Only if, by some miracle, the alabaster vessel were itself transformed into perfume would the perfume inside no longer be separated from the outside air and no longer stay shut up in the only vessel to contain it.  Now, this was exactly what took place during Jesus’ life on earth: the alabaster vessel, which was the pure human nature of the Savior, was itself changed into perfume; in other words, by virtue of his full and total assent to the Father’s will, the flesh of Christ gradually became spiritualized, until at the resurrection it became “a spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15:44), the “Christ according to the Spirit” (cf. Rom. 1:4).  The cross was the moment when the last barrier fell; the alabaster vessel was then shattered, as at the anointing at Bethany, and the Spirit poured out, filling, “the whole house,” that is to say the entire Church, with perfume.  The Holy Spirit is the trail of perfume Jesus left behind when he walked the earth!  The martyr St. Ignatius of Antioch admirably combines the two moments we have been considering – that of the anointing and that of the outpouring of the Spirit – where he writes: “The Lord received a perfumed (myron) ointment on his head, so that he could breathe incorruptibility on the Church.”

Come, Holy Spirit!  Please be our welcome guest! 

Pentecost – we have a part to play

15 Sunday May 2016

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PentecostIn looking at my Facebook feed this weekend I have been reminded that we are in the midst of graduation season. Picture after picture of smiling graduates, at all levels, all across the country…  We certainly celebrate with graduates and congratulate them on what they have achieved.  But it is worthwhile to also note that behind every graduate stands dedicated teachers – men and women who often selflessly work for the good of their students.

I have recognized that one of the greatest gifts I have known in my life is that I have had exceptional teachers.  I have been blessed with men and women who have challenged and inspired me from elementary school all the way through my study of theology.  I owe to them so much – more than I can ever repay.  They guided my learning and also taught me how to keep learning.

But here is the catch – a teacher (even the very best teacher) can only instruct if the student is willing to listen. The student has a role to play.  The student must understand that he or she has a lack, that he or she does not have full knowledge, that he or she has something to learn and maybe even does not know what he or she does not know.  A student has to be open and willing to receive.  A student needs to be humble.

If today’s gospel (Jn. 14:15-16, 23b-25) sounds familiar it is because part of it was proclaimed last Sunday. Last Sunday I choose to focus on the Father and Son coming to dwell with the believer in friendship.  This Sunday, being Pentecost, it is appropriate I believe to focus on these words offered by our Lord, “I have told you this while I am with you. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name, he will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.”  

One of the roles of the Holy Spirit is to teach but a teacher (even the very best) can only instruct if the student is willing to listen, if the student recognizes that he or she has a lack and if the student is humble and willing to receive. On Pentecost we proclaim and celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples but the coming of the Spirit did not end there.  If this celebration is to be authentic then we, on our part, must be willing to ask the question, “Am I willing to listen and then receive the gift of the Spirit and the Spirit’s instruction for me?”  I have to be humble enough to acknowledge my need and my lack and then I have to be faith-filled enough to accept what the Holy Spirit has to give.

That day of Pentecost the gathering of disciples was so little, so small in such a big world. The Holy Spirit comes upon them like a strong driving wind and they begin to proclaim the good news!  Acts lists a multitude of nations and peoples present and then we are told that each nation and grouping heard the disciples proclaiming in their own tongue.  To this small, little gathering of disciples God gives nothing less than the whole world!  We have a part to play on Pentecost.  We have to be faith-filled enough to accept what the Holy Spirit has to give us!

Lord, may we not be so stingy and little of heart as to begrudge your call. Playing small is not part of Pentecost.  It is a false humility.

Pentecost is considered the birthday of the Church and on this birthday we find two things – the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the small gathering of disciples in prayer, listening and fully aware of their need. How do we learn how to listen?  In any age the skill of listening is needed but I believe now, even more, this skill is needed in our lives and in our world.  How do we learn how to listen?

Here is one simple thought. Scripture testifies that there is only one person who was present at the birth of Christ, who was present at the crucifixion and who was present at Pentecost.  One person – Mary, the mother of our Lord.  To learn how to listen and then have the faith to say “yes” go to Mary.  Seek her out in Scripture, seek her out in prayer.  Ask her to pray for you and to pray with you.  She will teach if we are willing to listen.

A teacher can only instruct if the student is willing to listen. We have a part to play on Pentecost.  We need to listen and we need to have the faith to say “yes” to the Holy Spirit.

Thoughts on the Sunday readings: Pentecost

24 Sunday May 2015

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PentecostHave you ever held an acorn in your hand?  In that seed all the potentiality of a towering oak tree is present.  Have you ever held a newborn infant?  In that newly born child is all the potentiality of an adult human being whose very life will affect countless other people and maybe even the course of human history itself.  It has been said that growth is the only sure indicator of life but growth has to begin somewhere, from some kernel of life.

In today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2:1-11) we hear that the disciples and some women were gathered together when the Holy Spirit came upon them in the sound of a strong driving wind and in the appearance of tongues of fire – this smallest of groups.  They began to speak in different languages so that the people outside heard them speaking in their own language.

An unknown African writer of the sixth century offers these thoughts in regards to this miraculous event:

The disciples spoke in the language of every nation. At Pentecost God chose this means to indicate the presence of the Holy Spirit: whoever had received the Spirit spoke in every kind of tongue. We must realize, dear brothers, that this is the same Holy Spirit by whom love is poured out in our hearts. It was love that was to bring the Church of God together all over the world. And as individual men who received the Holy Spirit in those days could speak in all kinds of tongues, so today the Church, united by the Holy Spirit, speaks in the language of every people.

On that first Pentecost we find all the potentiality present of what the Church was and still is to become. We find the kernel of the beginning of the Church Universal – a Church present in every land, every culture, every class and ministering in every human condition.

The author knows that it is the love “poured out” out into hearts that allows for and sustains this life and growth. This love is nothing other than the presence of the Holy Spirit. This is not the “love” so often touted in our world today – a love that is often really just a reflection of our own ego. The love that is the Holy Spirit does not originate from us and our concerns rather it is “poured out” upon us. It is the love of the Father and Son which is given on Pentecost and which continues to enliven the Church throughout history.

Paul reminds us that no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit. It is only the Spirit who enables us to turn those mere words into a true profession of faith, rooted in lives which are continually being transformed and transfigured by the light of Christ.

In some sense looking back is also worth noting. For the most part, I do not today look anything like I did when I was first born. I’ve gotten taller, I weigh more, I grew hair and I have begun to lose hair, I have learned much more but, even though I may look very different from that newborn infant born forty-seven years ago, I am still the same person just more fully so. The Catholic Church today may not look exactly like that first gathering of disciples on Pentecost – there is two thousand years of history, institutions and roles have developed and continue to do so – but it is the same church just more fully so. The Holy Spirit enables this growth in truth.

Our Lord told us that the Spirit will guide us into all truth. We know this. We have been living it now for two thousand years as Church and continue to do so even today. The love which enables all this to happen does not originate from us. It is poured out upon us. It is the love of the Father and the Son, the very Holy Spirit of God.

Holy Spirit, continue to come upon us, continue to guide us into all truth, into who we are meant to be as your Church!