Happy Pentecost! It is hard to find good pictures or statues
of the Holy Spirit, because it is hard to picture or to imagine the third
Person of the Most Holy Trinity. We have
all these insubstantial, amorphous images of the Holy Spirit: fire/ breath/ wind / dove = they are all not
very impressive, not physically commanding, not substantial like a rock or iron. And yet, they are images of something very
powerful; something influential.
In the Gospel Jesus breathed
on them and said: "Receive the Holy Spirit." A mere breath, so small and seemingly
inconsequential; and yet so powerful, so potent! This breath gave new life, and changed
everything.
I had a powerful experience of this
one year when I was in Alaska. My first
priestly assignment was at St. Nicholas Church in North Pole, Alaska, near
Fairbanks. Just like the Summers here in
central Texas are loooong, so the winters in the interior of Alaska are
loooooong. I know, I lived through four
of them. It is bad enough that it is dark most of the
time, with only three hours of available daylight in the Fairbanks area on the
shortest day of the year. And it is bad
enough that it is darn cold all the time, and just to go outside requires a
major effort of putting on coats and boots and masks and gloves and so on. The coldest I ever experienced in the time I
was there was 62 degrees below zero. That’s
cold.
But Alaskans, like Texans, are
tough. The Alaskans can handle the cold
and the dark. The worst is the
ice-fog. Ice-fog is the frozen exhaust
from people and building and cars that forms a very thick, impenetrable cloud,
thicker than any fog you see here in Texas.
And it builds up. You cannot see
in ice-fog, even with your lights on. It
makes driving very dangerous. Schools
never cancel in Alaska due to the cold, but they do cancel when the ice-fog
builds up. You feel trapped, confined,
hemmed-in, because you can never see very far.
Usually this lasts only a short while, until the first little breeze
comes along, which blows the ice-fog away.
But the winter in the Alaskan interior can be very still; deadly
still.
The snow builds up for inches on telephone wires, because
there is no breeze to knock it off. And
when the mercury drops below 20 below zero, and there is no wind or even the
slightest breeze for days and days, then ice-fog builds up.
One year was especially bad. People got depressed, irritable, feeling blue
and down. School was canceled. It was dangerous to go out. You felt cooped up. Hemmed in. Trapped. There was not a breath of air, not the
slightest breeze. And the ice-fog got
thicker and thicker.
Finally, there was a slight breeze, a
breath of wind, and the ice-fog suddenly and totally disappeared. Everyone’s mood abruptly changed: instantly,
dramatically and for the better. I have never seen such a big change in an
entire community, all because of a mere breath of air. So insubstantial, so amorphous, and yet so
very powerful.
That is what the Holy Spirit is
like. That breath that blows away the
fog, allows us to see and understand, to be free to go out to live again, that
lifts up our hearts and spirits.
It is the Holy Spirit that gives us
the ability to comprehend and see God’s love for us, to understand what is
really important in this life. The
Spirit gives, not just intelligence, but wisdom; the ability to know what
matters in life. The Holy Spirit enables
us to hear the other, to keep an open mind, and the greatest miracle of all, to
change our hearts.
The 2nd Eucharistic Prayer
for Reconciliation puts it beautifully:
"…by Your Spirit you move human hearts (so) that enemies may speak
to each other again, adversaries join hands, and peoples seek to meet together. By the working of your power it comes about,
O Lord, that hatred is overcome by love, revenge gives way to forgiveness, and
discord is changed to mutual respect."
That is powerful!
The Spirit is nebulous,
insubstantial, almost tenuous, but has the power to enter into the very fiber
of our hearts and souls, and change us from within. The Spirit seems fragile and
inconsequential. A mere breath, flimsy
and feeble as a soap bubble, but so very, very powerful. Jesus breathed on them, (blow bubbles) and
said, "Receive the Holy Spirit."
A mere breath. (Blow bubbles). And yet beautiful and oh, so powerful.
¡Come Holy Spirit! AMEN.
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