Who Is the Holy Spirit?

Wind . . .

Fire . . .

Oil . . .

Rain . . .

Around the turn of the last century, millions of Europeans took part in a wave of immigration to the United States in search of new opportunities. Many who came were of limited means and did not speak English. So it was no surprise that they didn't understand all the terms of their transport. For example, some believed that the meals served on board were on a pay-as-you-go basis. So, wanting to save money, they brought their own food with them. And while other passengers enjoyed die rich fare in the dining room, these families stayed in their cabins, rationing cold meats and dried fruits and hoping for the best. They didn't know that the price of their tickets included three full meals a day!

This story of the misinformed passengers is a good analogy for our Christian lives. As believers baptized into Christ, we have received the Holy Spirit. God himself lives in our hearts-and he doesn't just live there passively. He wants to take everything that Jesus taught and everything that he won on the cross and impart it to us. He wants to give us "every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 1:3) and to become the guiding force in our lives. Such a rich banquet of divine grace is included in our "baptismal ticket," and yet so often, we settle for cold meats and dried fruit!

At the first Pentecost two thousand years ago, God poured out the Holy Spirit. The disciples were transformed and empowered to live for God in a whole new way. Now, as we begin this new year, we want to look at how all of us can meet the Holy Spirit in a new and deeper way. For so many believers, the Holy Spirit remains a relatively unknown member of the Trinity, and this makes it very difficult to experience everything God has planned for us. So this month, let's try to reverse this trend and devote ourselves to seeking and finding the Spirit more deeply.

God the Forgotten. As a rule, we tend to know quite a bit about our heavenly Father. We recognize him as God, and we use certain words to describe him: words like holy, allknowing, all-powerful, merciful, forgiving, loving, and caring. When we meditate on our Father, we see a loving Father who gave us life, who intimately cares for us, and who wants to share himself with us. While we sense that these words are ultimately inadequate, we also acknowledge that they can go a long way in helping us reach out to him.

We can say similar things about Jesus. As the Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity holds a dear place in our hearts-for many, even more so than the Father. Jesus is the one who came to earth and taught us the things of God. He's the one who told us about the plan of God, who redeemed us by his blood, and who feeds us through the Sacrament of the Mass. He's the one who intercedes for us before the throne of God on a daily basis.

However, when it comes to the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity, we tend to have a difficult time describing him. He remains a mysterious force in the church and in the world-a force that we may find hard to identify in our lives. On one level, this is not entirely without reason. The metaphors that are used to describe him make it hard to imagine him. Words like fire, wind, rain, and dove more often leave us with a vague notion rather than with the concept of a living Person with whom we can have a relationship. It may not help, either, that his primary mission is to reveal the Father and the Son to us-not himself. But that doesn't mean that we can't identify his work in us or experience his power.

A Limited-But Helpful-Analogy. Let's use an analogy to help explain how the Spirit works. Picture your brain. It has two halves, called hemispheres, which work closely together. Scientists believe that one side of the brain governs our logical thinking, while the other side governs our creative thinking. It's the function of the nervous system to tie these two halves together, coordinate all the impulses from them, and send them to the rest of the body, enabling us to take action as necessary.

Now let's imagine that the Father is the "left hemisphere" and that Jesus is the "right hemisphere." The Holy Spirit would then be like the nervous system, revealing the will of the Father and the Son to us, energizing our bodies, and urging us to act in a godly way.

Of course, this analogy is lacking in its finer points. But it does help us expand the way we grasp the Holy Spirit and the vital role that he plays in our lives. Like the nervous system, the Holy Spirit wants to take what is of God and communicate it to us. He wants to teach us, move us, and convince us how much the whole Trinity cares for us.

Meeting the Holy Spirit. Throughout Scripture, the Holy Spirit is presented as having the very same attributes that we normally associate with God the Father. Like the Father, he is eternal, having no beginning and no end (Hebrews 9:14). He is omnipresent, everywhere at the same time (Psalm 139:7). He is omniscient, having all knowledge and insight into the mystery of God and his plan (1 Corinthians 2:10-11). He is omnipotent, being himself the "power of the Most Hieh" (Luke 1:35).

Like the Father, the Holy Spirit is not distant, cold, or aloof. Rather, he is with us and lives in our hearts (1 Corinthians 3:16). He speaks to us (Acts 13:2); commands us (Acts 16:6); intercedes for us (Romans 8:26); leads us (Romans 8:14); testifies about Jesus to us (John 15:26); reveals the truth of Christ to us (John 16:13); convicts us of sin and final judgment (John 16:8,11); convinces us that Jesus is the Lord of all creation (John 16:14-15); joins us and helps us pray to God (Romans 8:16); sanctifies us (Romans 15:16); and seals God's promises of eternal life in our hearts (Ephesians 1:13-14).

What a magnificent job description! And this list is far from complete. At first glance, all of these responsibilities seem overwhelming. How could the Spirit possibly accomplish all of this, and for so many people? We have only to look at the past two thousand years of church history-and the countless centuries before Christ-for the evidence that he is more than capable of all this and even more!

The Spirit in the Church, it was the Spirit who came upon the church at Pentecost. It was the Spirit who moved Saul at Damascus. It was the Spirit who guided the development of the churches in Ephesus, Corinth, Thessakmica, Phillppi, Galatia, and beyond. It was the Spirit who moved the Ethiopian eunuch, the jailer and his family, Lydia, and Cornelius to conversion and to a new life as members of the body of Christ.

It was the Spirit who moved the saints to conversion. Who can forget the sinner-turned-saint story of Augustine? Who can forget the way the Spirit raised up St. Dominic to help combat heresy and spread the gospel throughout the world? Who can forget the way the Spirit used one somewhat complacent nunTeresa of Avila-to spark a revival in prayer and spirituality that continues to affect the church today?

These stories of conversion, love, and service are not the stories of men and women who did something special for God on their own. They are stories of how the Holy Spirit fulfilled his job description. Of course, it was the men and women who decided to cooperate, but the Holy Spirit was always the guiding force, working behind the scenes to reveal God's will to them and to empower them beyond their natural human limitations.

Today, the Holy Spirit is still working among us. He is in all of us, urging us to live for God and work for him. As we begin this new year, then, let's make it our goal to get to know the Spirit better. Who knows what kinds of changes he wilt make, both in our UVES and to the lives of those around us?

Copyright Word Among Us Jan 2005
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved