Pentecost Sunday Thoughts
Pentecost brings the Holy Spirit front and center. Too often, we find God the Holy Spirit ignored, compared to God the Father and God the Son. Part of the reason, I think is that He is not as "sensible" as the Son (Jesus, Who became man and lived amongst us) and the Father, who we frequently portray and therefore "see" in some human form. The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, remains more "spiritual" in form to our human sensibilities, thus harder to grasp. Even when He is "seen" as a bird, a dove, it's not the same as our human image of Jesus and God the Father.
At least that's my two cents, for what it's worth (two cents at best!).
And given that many of us suffer this kind of vagueness in our understanding of the Holy Spirit, consider these words from the entry for Pentecost in The Inner Life of the Soul. It contrasts our reception of the Holy Spirit on this Pentecost Sunday with the first time the Spirit descended on the disciples with wind and tongues of fire:
Each soul of man is a little room where God the Holy Ghost has come.
We heard no sound that thrilled the whole house of our being, we saw no
light of burning flame, we felt nothing; yet God, the Spirit of light
and love, was truly there...
May God teach us indeed to know and love the Guest within our souls!
For our part, we must turn to God Himself, within us. We don't need to find our way to the Holy Spirit on our own. We could try to stumble about using the resources of our darkened intellect or our fallen human nature. Or we can go straight to the Light. Isn't the choice a simple one?
And isn't this really how we should always approach God? For so many of us, life bring much pain, sorrow and not a little confusion as we look around and wonder how God's creation and our personal circumstances could have come to this. If we are properly disposed, we turn to God; we trust in God alone. We beg His mercy, His forgiveness, His grace - and more, as find in The Inner Life of the Soul:
We seek for comfort, hither and thither, we seek for light; yet
comfort and light are within us, all the time. We live in great anxiety,
troubling ourselves about our future, or our friends, or our vocation,
and grieving lest we shall some time offend our Blessed Lord Who died to
save us from our sin...
As we noted last year as we were barely emerging from the terrible anxiety and distractions heaped upon us by the C-Virus Mess:
How often have I forgotten and ignored this awesome, wondrous reality of
the Holy Spirit living within my soul! Surrounded as we are by a world
that does all it can to distract us from the Spirit dwelling within us,
it's no wonder.
But today, Pentecost Sunday, we can tell
the Holy Spirit that we know He has come, that He lives within us. We can thank Him for His Holy Presence. Rather than listen to
ourselves, we can listen to Him.
Deferring to the power of the Holy Spirit isn't a matter of being lazy or irresponsible. We continue to conscientiously apply ourselves to meet our obligations at work and in the home. We exercise the self-control that allows us to, over time, master our sensual appetites, our mental flights of fancy, the swings of emotion that can cause us to be impatient, even uncharitable to those we love. But in all our efforts, we turn to God; we seek the enlightenment and guidance of His Holy Spirit.
Simply saying we'll do
God's Will runs the risk of putting the whole burden on ourselves. And
doing so runs the even greater risk of possibly taking credit for our efforts. We don't want self
to be our focus. Pentecost Sunday provides us the perfect opportunity
to, yet again, push self away and turn completely to God. His Holy
Spirit will do a much better job than we can ever hope to do.
Doing so, we live with the knowledge and understanding that all that is good comes from Him, from the assistance He provides with His grace. We
abandon ourselves to His mercy and His Love. Doing so, we cooperate
with the graces He provides to free us from our pride and selfishness.
We conclude this Pentecost Sunday thought with our traditional prayer to the Holy Spirit:
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