We hear today of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ speak of the coming of the Holy Ghost. In our Gospel passage, we hear Him called the Comforter. And the Holy Ghost is called the Spirit of Truth; we know that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life: thus the Holy Ghost is the Spirit of Jesus, and shares with us the spirit of Christ. The Holy Ghost is also spoken of in the Epistle from S. James, for James says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” The Holy Ghost comes down, in the language of Scripture and the Church: He comes down and gives us gifts, which are called the gifts of the Spirit. Fundamentally, the Holy Ghost unites us with Christ, and through Christ, to the Father. Because He gives good gifts, He is called the Comforter; He perfect gifts, from the Father, from Whom the Holy Spirit proceeds.
The predominant character of the Holy Ghost is spiritual energy, or what Jesus calls “fire.” We know that because of Pentecost, which we soon celebrate; for the Holy Ghost at Pentecost came down upon the apostles as tongues of fire. Yet what is most fundamental about the Holy Ghost is that it is He Who establishes the Church and binds the members of the Church together. This we hear in the passage from the Acts of the Apostles: “the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul,” (the Holy Ghost makes us of one heart and soul) and “with great power the apostles were giving their testimony of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus,” (it is the power of the Holy Ghost that gives the apostles the ability to proclaim the Gospel) and “great grace was upon them all” (because He is the Comforter).
Where the Holy Ghost is, there is the Church. It was because of the presence of the Holy Ghost among Gentile communities of Jesus followers in the early decades of the Church that the Apostles decided that Gentiles need not observe the full law of Moses before being admitted to the Church. The Holy Ghost was witnessed among them, witnessed by Peter, Paul, Barnabas, and others. Because the Holy Ghost was present in their Gentile community, they were seen as Christians.
The Holy Ghost in His power lights a fire in the hearts of men and women. He lights a fire in our hearts. And this fire is love for God, a burning heat for Jesus Christ. The Coming of the Holy Ghost—His Coming two thousand years ago to the Upper Room, His Coming today to our parish family. The Holy Ghost causes the hearts of people to seek God, to look for Him, to yearn for Him. And all of this amounts to living life in such a way so as, in the words of Saint Paul the Apostle, to be led by the Spirit of God. In all things, Christians seek to be led by the Spirit of God, because His very nature is to lead into Truth.
Jesus teaches us as well that the Holy Ghost bears witness to Christ. He reveals Christ to us. The Holy Ghost reveals Christ as alive, as our Saviour, indeed He reveals Jesus Christ to be our Lord, and He reveals Christ both in His sacred humanity but also in his glorified divinity. The Holy Ghost gives us faith, the gift of God that makes relationship with Christ possible, and makes our hope of eternal salvation in Christ possible. The Holy Ghost reveals the Gospel of Christ to be a Gospel of hope; the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a promise of freedom whereby the chains of self-centeredness are unshackled from our heart, and because of being freed from what enslaves us, our hearts learn to beat with the heart of Christ in His Church.
This is very much an experience of being born anew, and reborn in the Holy Spirit of God the Father through Jesus Christ, by Whom we reinterpret our lives, reinterpret our priorities, reinterpret the situations in which we make choices. This reinterpretation of our life and our circumstances is called discernment, and the Holy Ghost guides our discernment. Discernment is an ongoing process of the Christian life. It happens by asking two questions of our circumstances as we encounter them: What does it mean? (That is, is it of God, or is it of the devil?). And, what shall we do? (that is, what choice do I make, a choice that is godly and not self-centered?) By constant discernment, our ordinary life becomes a transformed life led by the Spirit of God.
In the words of Our Lord Jesus, God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. Being led by the Spirit of God is how we come to believe in Christ—believing in Him not in superficial ways, but believing in Him that through our faith, our heart is transformed, illumined, and on fire for Him that the fire that warms us is fire we share with others in the world, that they might share in the transforming heat of Jesus Christ. Come Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, and lighten with celestial fire. Fill us with life, fill us with grace. Remove our blindness and open the eyes of our heart—that we may yearn for deeper relationship with the living Christ, and see Him revealed as not only man, but truly as God: Christ Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost; ever one god, world without end. Amen.
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