Come Holy Spirit…

How do we imagine the person of the Holy Spirit? With a lot of images and words that seem to shatter our normal way of naming. For example, with the Hebrew word ‘Ruha’, which means at the same time, wind, breath, spirit. As the spirit  of God that hovered over the chaos waters of creation, and brought forth order and intelligibility. Behold it is good. As the animating power that spoke the breath of life into the dust that was humanity. Behold it is very good.

As the wind that swept back the waters of the Red Sea to set us free from slavery in Egypt. The same Spirit that animates the waters of Baptism, and is the soul of the Church.

The prophets spoke about a coming age of the spirit. The prophet Joel says, “I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh….even upon the servants and the handmaids, in those days, I will pour out my spirit”. Like Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones, “Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord….I will put my spirit in you that you may live.”

The scriptures associated with the gift of Holy Spirit are illuminating. The day of Pentecost which we celebrate today is on one hand, the reversal of the Tower of Babel. “That is why it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the speech of all the world. It was from that place that he scattered them all over the earth”. With the gift of the Spirit we move from linguistic chaos to the clarity of the word made flesh, toward a universal proclamation of the gospel in every tongue, to every nation. We move from being scattered, to being gathered. The Holy Spirit, a violent, mighty wind, tongues of fire and flame, come upon the first disciples. Giving them a transforming boldness to fearlessly proclaim the victory of Jesus over death and sin. 

Or, the mini Pentecost of John’s gospel, in the upper room when Jesus,  “breathed on [the apostles] and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” When Jesus gave the  church the power of tenderness and mercy.

Elsewhere Jesus says, “Rivers of living water will flow from the heart of the one who believes in me. He said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in him were to receive.” The Holy Spirit is not so much a reservoir within us, but a wellspring, a river of living water, saturating and overflowing the heart. 

So the Holy Spirit both comes upon us, and wells up from  within us. ‘More intimate to us than we are to ourselves’, as St. Augustine says. Or St. Paul’s, “the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings, too deep for words.” The Holy Spirit is the gift of the divine pedagogy, teaching us to pray, forming each one of us into ‘varieties of gifts,… activities,…services’, for “the common good”. 

All of us, living stones, animated by indwelling of the Holy Spirit.