A truck loaded with thousands of copies of Roget’s Thesaurus crashed yesterday, losing its entire load. Witnesses were stunned, startled, aghast, taken aback, stupefied, confused, shocked, rattled, paralyzed, dazed, bewildered, mixed up, surprised, awed, dumbfounded, nonplussed, flabbergasted, astounded, amazed, confounded, astonished, overwhelmed, horrified, numbed, speechless, and perplexed.
Each year the Church commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Mary and the Apostles in the Upper Room. Pentecost is celebrated as the “birthday of the Church. We dress in red vestments to call to mind the tongues as of fire that rested on the heads of the disciples. We chant, “Come, Holy Spirit!” But who is the Holy Spirit and what’s it all about?
The first thing we see from the sacred text is that the Holy Spirit is POWER, specifically the power of the love of God active in the life of the Church and in every Christian. Theologically, we understand the Holy Spirit as the love between the Father and the Son. By its very nature, love is procreating animating, and recreating. It is procreative in the act of creation itself. God does not need the universe and everyone in it, but God is love and love creates. So here we are, created in love for love.
The Holy Spirit is also animating, that is it gives the “anima” or soul that enables the universe, the Church, each one of us to become what we are created to be in the first place. It was the power of the Spirit that breathed over the waters and gave life to all things. It was the power of the Spirit by which the Word took flesh of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was the power of the Spirit that breathed life and courage into the disciples in the Upper Room so that they ceased to be frightened and went forth boldly proclaiming the resurrection and the forgiveness of sins.
The Holy Spirit is also recreating. Most profoundly, this happens in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Again, love by its nature leads to ever-deepening communion (unity at the very level of being). However, because the world and everyone in it has limits, those limits will manifest themselves, sometimes in very hurtful and divisive ways. It is here that the power of the Spirit enables us to seek forgiveness from those whom we have sinned against and to forgive those who have sinned against us. Forgiveness is the power of the Spirit overcoming our limitations and allowing us to transcend the offense and open the way for reconciliation. There is no sin greater than the power of God’s love to forgive. By the same token, because the same spirit dwells in us, there is no sin greater than our power to forgive.
In sum, the Holy Spirit is the power of God’s love active in the world and the life of the Church. This love is at one procreating, animating and recreating. It is the power of the God’s love that enables us to love as God loves and so help the world become what he has created it to be.