Word to the Wise
Sunday, May 27, 2007 - Pentecost Sunday
[Acts 2:1-11; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13 or Romans 8:8-17; John 20:19-23 or 14:14-16, 23b-26]If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
One of the words that figures prominently in the scripture today from St. Paul's Letter to the Romans and the Gospel of John (second selection) is "dwell" or "dwelling." The words quoted above are from Romans. In the Gospel passage, Jesus tells the disciples at the Last Supper, "Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him." When we Americans use those words, we generally mean a place to live or the act of living in a place. When we use it in the sense of "dwelling on a subject" we still mean a sense of staying on a point of interest. The scriptural sense may escape us either through our passing over it lightly as meaning some sort of pious thought or we may take it a bit too literally as meaning that we are "containers" of the Spirit in some way. The event of Pentecost is an historical event, but sometimes we leave it right there without any present significance for ourselves. The "indwelling" of the Holy Spirit as a present and active principle in our lives is a reality that just doesn't figure into daily existence! When we love someone deeply, it is as if that person literally lives inside us. God's love is manifest to us in the "sending" of the Holy Spirit to dwell in us. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that the New Law of Christ, the law of love, is nothing other than the Holy Spirit working in our hearts through faith in Christ. Love is life-giving and the Holy Spirit is God's love living in us. The problem is often our awareness of this reality. We associate the Holy Spirit with the sacrament of Confirmation which most of us receive in youth as a sort of "rite of passage" and think of as a one-time thing. We simply do not pay attention to the possibility of God's love being as much a part of us as our relationships of love to other persons. Pentecost is often referred to as the "birthday" of the Church because it transformed a frightened group of Jews into courageous preachers. But Pentecost is an event that continues in all believers. We profess our faith in "the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life" on Sundays in the Nicene Creed. This can leave the Holy Spirit as something "out there" instead of a life-giving love within us. Today is a day when we can remind ourselves of God's abiding love and resolve to take hold of a great gift that both comforts and motivates us a disciples. As the old prayer says, "Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of your love!" AMEN
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