Temples of the spirit
Love announces the presence of the Spirit in our hearts. Our recognition of the presence of God in our lives is the work of the Spirit. The day we begin praying to the Spirit for the grace to be willing to be who Christ would have been if he were lucky enough to be one of us marks the beginning of a deeper love relationship with the Lord. From that moment on, the spirit of the Father's love for the Son and the Son's love for the Father is ours. Caught in the deepest of all meanings of love, the still point of being in love, the lived experience of prayer brings to life the Spirit at work in our hearts. The Spirit speaks for us in the cry of "Abba, Father" rising from our hearts in the intense emptiness of a dark night. Our prayer cries out for belonging to God. In the lived moment of the wordlessness of our hearts we encounter the Spirit pleading for us to the Creator. Our souls have become Temples of the Spirit.
Dawning of love
Love in our Spiritual lives gives us a growing vision of God. Our personal Pentecost is the dawning of love in our hearts. Christ indicated the importance of Pentecost at the Last Supper when he said, "...the Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name will teach you everything..."(Jn. 14:26) The apostles, though they had known Christ personally, did not recognize him immediately in his resurrectional appearances. The Christ of the resurrection was a stranger to the two disciples traveling to Emmaus until they recognized him in the breaking of the bread. Although the Apostles met Christ a number of times after he rose from the dead, the coming of the Spirit would sharpen their awareness of Christ's presence through the gifts of the Spirit. The "everything" the Spirit would teach would include wisdom, knowledge, counsel, and understanding of Christ in his humanity. The putting on the mind of Christ would complete the Apostle's training. Molded by piety, fortitude, and fear of the Lord, the disciples would have hearts alive to Christ. Christ would claim their hearts. These same gifts of the Spirit will resurface our hearts as the Christ Hearts of today. Thus, we proclaim the Sacred Heart and enshrine it in our world.
Love for others
Seven gifts - Wisdom, Knowledge, Counsel, Understanding, Fortitude, Piety and Fear of the Lord - in which we are always growing, are ours by virtue of our membership in the family of God. The presence of the Spirit in our lives is most pronounced in the love we have for others. Christ made it clear at the Last Supper just how far reaching our love ought to be: "...no greater love than to lay down one's life for a friend"(John 15:13). "What I command you is to love one another"(John 15:17). "If you love me, you will keep my commandments"(John 14:15). Love of God and love of our neighbor are Christs commandments to us. The Spirit surrounds our love and is our love for one another.
Put on Christ
The gifts of the Holy Spirit make it possible to put on the mind and the heart of Christ. The mind of Christ can be missing in anyone. If our own adherence to Christ is to make any sense at all, we have to put on the mind and the heart of Christ. Prayer makes the mind and heart of Christ a living memory in us. We come to know Christ through the Scriptures. Listening to our hearts brings us closer to the Christ who touched our hearts in baptism. Christ reaches out to our world by using our gifts for spreading his kingdom. If we are going to own the mind and the heart of Christ, our gifts have to fuse with our energies of life as we reach out to the needs of our world.
Becoming complete
The gifts of the mind are complemented by the gifts that touch the heart. Wisdom, knowledge, understanding and counsel are the mind gifts that need the heart-felt gifts of piety, fortitude and fear of the Lord. Together they are the quality of a Christ life. Piety, fortitude and fear of the Lord are other gifts of the Spirit which come together to stretch our hearts. Both sets of gifts are the Spirit at work to help us put on the mind and the heart of Christ. The Spirit works to capture all of our being for Christ. The distinction of the intellect and the will often de-personalizes these gifts so that we lose touch with the Holy Spirit. One becomes a complete person in Christ by the working of the Holy Spirit in us.
No greater love
Love is the beginning of wisdom. We cannot love others if we do not love ourselves. But we can only love ourselves if we have been loved. Human love begins with a parent's love. A mother's love is incomprehensible, yet it teaches us, at an early age, the meaning of love. Divine love is best understood in God's love for us as expressed in the humanness of Christ who died on the cross for us. Wisdom is found in Christ's "no greater love." Wisdom is the Word made flesh and the fleshed out forgiveness of the cross.
Born in our time
Knowledge of Christ is all the information we possess of the events in the life of Christ. The knowledge produces meaning in us as we grow in our journey of faith to become other Christs. We read the Scriptures and come to an awareness of who this man Christ is. He lives with the Church as his Mystical Body. In what we know about the Church we come to recognize Christ in all he does in the lives of our brothers and our sisters. Reading the lives of great saints helps increase our knowledge of Christ. We imagine what Christ would have been like had he been born in their age and time. The 'saints' of our own families and friends help us to understand the Christ of the Scriptures by the way they have incorporated Christ into their own lives. The gift of knowledge dawning in our minds brings the light of Christ. Light is shed on who we can be in Christ.
Our destiny
The Apostles who accompanied Christ during his Public Life, and the understanding the Spirit gave them, sustained the early Church. Our understanding of friends and ourselves will continue through life until the day we see Christ face to face. Then eye will see and ear will hear what has not yet been seen or said in the history of the world. At last we will understand, in the fullness of the Christ of Heaven, what life in the Spirit invites us to have as our destiny.
Test of authority
The translation of Christ into our 20th century is the work of the Holy Spirit. Our belonging to the Church is the movement of the Holy Spirit in us. Paul could have heard of Christ many times in his life and never understood what Christ was about. As he subjected his understanding of Christ to the Spirit, through the Apostles he came to know in a deeper way what he understood in his prayer and the time spent in darkness. Understanding puts the process of learning to the test of authority. It allows us to realize the truth of our thoughts.
Hard love
Wisdom, knowledge and understanding are the natural outcrop of the Spirit's grace within us. The divine indwelling reaches a tangible expression in the beauty of our love reaching out to another's need. Rid of selfishness our hearts have a greater capacity for loving. Our world does not understand hard love measured by Christ's giving from the cross. In us, hard love is measured by what we give rather than receive. Our wisdom, knowledge and understanding are tempered by our love of the cross of Christ. "The greatest love a person can have for his friends is to give his life for them. " (Jn. 15:13)
Counsel
Counsel is the coming together of wisdom, knowledge and understanding in the practical advice given or received. Counsel points out what is missing in our Christ relationship. We have counsel for others in our understanding of what is missing in their Christ relationship. We need spiritual direction and discernment on the spiritual journey. Counsel must be prudent so advice will not be beyond our strength for living a good life.
Piety
Often enough, in our lives, there is a note of scorn in our voices when we call someone pious. Yet piety is the strength of personal love for Christ. We are called to lose ourselves in Christ so we can say with Paul: "...I live now not with my own life, but with the life of Christ, who lives in me. "(Galatians 2:20) The Spirit so strengthens our love of God in Christ we can have no other movement in our hearts stronger than the relationship of Christ to his Father. Christ's love touches the foundation of our being, giving us his relationship to the Father.
Fortitude
Fortitude is a sorely needed gift of the Spirit in our world and in our Church. It makes perseverance and sticking to a difficult task possible. Fortitude energizes us to live up to what we believe. Fortitude is essential to religious life. The intensity of a life following Christ all the way to the Cross relies on fortitude. Marriages can flounder in its absence. Every form of community will fall by the wayside without it. The intensity of our love is a measure of fortitude. To another, we can offer a love as intense as Christ's love, in season and out of season, when it is acceptable and even when it is not acceptable. Fortitude strengthens us in the way we share our love. The sinner who keeps on trying against all obstacles, and one day reaches the pinnacle of holiness, gets there by fortitude. The attraction of a pleasure locking us into selfishness is counterbalanced by the call of grace, which gradually allows us to build up the habit of saying "yes" to our Lord. Fortitude is the love of a heart capable of outlasting temptation. Fortitude forges a will of iron, which enables us to do what the Lord is asking.
Fear of the Lord
Our journey of love calls us to choose our beloved over everyone and everything else in life. Each time we fail we have a new movement of the Spirit flowing from a fear of the Lord. There are times when we do not want to live with our Lord, but we need him, whether we know it or not. Every time we pick something other than our Master, and make it, even for a moment, the meaning of life, we feel the grumbling of our hearts, calling, calling, calling us back to this God, whose absence we fear more than the awesome experience of his living within us. Fear of losing the Lord can be one of the freeing experiences of life. We will do the impossible to keep him.
Other Christs
We dare to be other Christs. Fear, which keeps us from doing something, is what most mean by the fear of the Lord. Yet it is more than just that. Our hearts quake before the awesomeness of God's presence in Jesus Christ. We have the gift of the fear of the Lord when we look deep within. In the Mystery of Indwelling we realize in whose presence we are. This fear does not bring paralysis; rather it brings a moment of adoration in the unveiling of God's presence in us.
God's way
The Spirit is sent to empower us on our own missions in life. We have to surrender our way of doing things in favor of God's way. We have to realize that God is in our lives. There are no accidents in the plan of God. He has chosen us. He has chosen to be in our lives. The coming of the Spirit deepens the surrender of our lives to God's action in us. The surrender to this call allows God to work through us, because grace builds on nature. This enables us to see how much more can be done than we could ever have dreamt of doing alone.
Contemplatives in action
We have to make the transition from simply being preserved in life to being active participants with the Lord working through us. The ideal is to let the Lord work one hundred percent while we do nothing. All blocks to the-Lord-taking-care-of-everything need to be removed with today's Pentecost.
Each of the Gifts of the Spirit makes it possible for us to be present to the needs of each other through the fruit of the Spirit. These fruit distinguish our relationship to Christ. When grace builds on nature, the fruit of the Spirit focus nature by shining forth with gracefulness, and exposing the uniqueness of each of us.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon us
Genuine Christians offer these fruit of the Spirit so neighbors will taste them and be nourished by them. The fruit of the Spirit are much more obvious in others than in us. Love is the working of the spirit attracting our hearts by the gift of another. Love is not an abstraction, and its expression as a fruit of the spirit plants in our hearts these same fruit of the Spirit.
In the Gospel of Luke we encounter Christ reading from the prophet Isaiah, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has chosen me to bring good news to the poor..."(Luke 4:18). His comment on the scripture was; "This passage of Scripture has come true today as you heard it being read."(Luke 4:21) The presence of the Spirit within us has an outgoing manifestation discoverable in the fruit of the spirit. The force of the spirit within flows to the exterior of our lives, and his fruit show his presence within.
Fruits of the Spirit
The genuine living of our Christ-life should have many outward signs. A list could include more than the charity, peace, joy, patience, benignity, chastity, continency, longsuffering, goodness, mildness, faith and modesty that make up the traditional listing of the fruit of the Spirit. By the fruit of the Spirit we shall be known as Christians. Our love for one another needs the uniqueness that flows out of the mixture of the gifts of the Spirit. The recognition of the uniqueness of a friend elaborates the meaning of a fruit of the Spirit. Love for another flows from the appreciation of the uniqueness of one or more of the fruits of the Spirit in another.
Love
A great heart is recognized by its generosity, in its giving of self in love. The only thing we can change in a relationship is the amount of love we give, and the way we give it to one another. At the other extreme from generosity is selfishness, which manipulates the gift of another for personal gain. Love attempts to give the better gift, recognizable as the fruit of charity.
Joy
Joy flows from a genuine heart. Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God in any life. Joy goes deeper than a silly smile. The happiness of being a child of God is part of joy. The closeness of belonging is part of joy. The living of our truth brings joy. Desire to be true to our word is written on our heart and is the source of joy. The sad-faced Christian contradicts the Good News of the gospel. We like ourselves when we are living up to the dictates of our hearts. Holiness brings sane living, and the wholeness of sanctity brings a joy strong enough to survive even the trials of Job. Joy is one of the best signs of the closeness of God to us. The divine indwelling surfaces joy again and again, showing the truth of our hearts closeness to God. It is the gift belonging to the Resurrection.
Peace
Peace is the sign of a soul that has it all together. It is tranquility of a heart secure in its relationship to the Father. Love calls us to togetherness with the beloved. Poverty, short life and dishonor that mark the life of Christ are difficult to want, until love for Christ and the Father strengthens us. Once our peace is strongly established in our relationship to Christ, our unruffled spirits flow from our freedom to give of ourselves rather than our concern with what we are receiving. Christ chose poverty, and his spirit within us chooses his poverty. The disgrace of the cross bringing the glory of Christ makes possible the great peace of Christ's cross in the saints. It allows us to see in our crosses a closeness to Christ. The human Christ who lived two thousand years ago is out of our reach, but his choices of life are possible to us. Christ can be touched and held in no better way, with the exception of Eucharist, than by the way we live out his choices of life. Our awareness of trying to choose as Christ chose brings peace.
Peace is possible amid fears. The Apostles of the upper room were filled with fear when Christ brought them his peace. Once we make the choices of Christ our own, nothing can separate us from the peace Christ brings. The world no longer can force us away from Christ because honor and power lose their attraction: they are not his choices. He chose poverty, short life and the dishonor of the cross.
Only the choice of something other than Christ endangers peace. Sin is the distance that exists between who I am and who I should be in following Christ. Sin is never we, it is always I. Our peace is in what we do for Christ as the other. Our peace is in our being with Christ by our togetherness with others. It allows us to be the leaders our world needs.
Patience
Patience is seen in the acceptance of our own and others' growth. It is easier to see growth in others than in us. Growth requires pruning to remove the dead wood. Such pruning is the work of the Father. It makes room for the gifts and fruit of the Holy Spirit.
The prunings of life have opened us to growth. Pruning and growth are not always easy. They often occur in periods of great stress, where we are not aware of what is happening. The piercing of the heart of Jesus on the cross ranks as one of the sharpest cuts of all time. Our own cuts do not always draw the best from us.
Kindness
Christ becomes part of the excitement of our life in the experience of the coming forth of the Spirit in our salvation history story. When the Spirit comes to us, we are enabled to live up to Christ in us. Our Christ gifts are always renewed for what is needed as our hearts are claimed to meet the challenge of what is to be done in our world today.
Gentleness
We joyfully recognize the presence of the Spirit as the bursting-out expression of the pleasure of giving. Not only does God love a cheerful giver. We all do, even loving ourselves when we give cheerfully. The fun of giving opens the eyes of our soul in an ever-widening circle of love until one day we can be more concerned about the world in which we live than in ourselves. The life of Christ, knowable from the scriptures, becomes real to us in the gifts and the fruits of the Spirit.
Goodness
Each of the fruits of the spirit is a living out of a gift of the spirit in a practical way, thus making it a pleasure to be with another. The fruits of the spirit make us loveable. Once we are willing to say that we need another, we know, in the recognition of the gift they possess, the working of the Spirit in our relationship. It goes both ways. Others can discover in us what we discover in them. A living people-list of the twelve fruits is its own reward. Much more rewarding is the discovery of what attracts our hearts to holy people.
Christ's holiness
All of the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit have to do with love. Perfect love always generates new love. The fruits of the Spirit are found in Christ and the imitation of Christ produces fruits of the Spirit. The fruits of the Spirit reveal the uniqueness of Christ's holiness in each of us. We are called by the gentleness of Christ. He does not call us by force. The "come follow me" touches our hearts as an invitation. The desire to follow is born of the truth of the attraction of holiness. Christ calls us to find ourselves in him.
The beauty of Christ's love is that it has anticipated us. Before we have been born, Christ has loved us and we are called to find in him the deepest meaning of our creation. All the other religions are touched by the Spirit of God, and in the very touch tell us something about holiness. Christianity not only tells us something about holiness, but also in telling us about Christ gives us the example of the perfect holiness of life. Christ tells us something about what it means to be ourselves and the richness of the Spirit in each of us is founded on the relationship to Christ's gifts of the Spirit.
The birth of the Church
As the blood and water issued forth from the pierced heart of Christ, the Church was conceived. Pentecost marks the birth of the Church and claims Christ's spirit as its ongoing life that will be fulfilled in the final resurrection. Love carries us toward fusion with the beloved. The tension of love is found in the need of independence and autonomy. Growing up in this love carries us into the Mystical Body of Christ in the interdependence of our lives together where our gifts are needed and expressed as the life of the Church. The source of this love is the Holy Spirit. The locus of this love is the Sacred Heart of Jesus. And the possibility of this love is the exchange of hearts with Christ.
Personal Pentecost
We live in an age of the Spirit. But we often pay only lip service to the Holy Spirit in the Gloria, the Creed and the sign of the Cross. How often do we adore the Holy Spirit in the depths of our hearts? Our missing challenge to holiness could be the ignorance of the coming of the Spirit in our own lives. The gifts of the Spirit can make us aware of the coming of the Spirit to us. We have all heard of 'the Coming of the Holy Spirit' upon the Apostles at Pentecost. Yet our unawareness of his coming to us from without makes us incomplete in our own relationship to the Spirit. Most of us claim the Spirit at Baptism, but need encouragement to frequently tap the Spirit. Few realize that for every new need of the community, there is the possibility of a new coming. Christians will never get beyond the need of new comings because the problems of the growing pains will be with us until the end.
A new coming
We think of someone missing when we hear of the Holy Spirit, and yet the Spirit moves us when we adore the Lord our God. People whom we respect as spiritual are filled with the Spirit. Yet many of them do not realize that for every need of the people of God, there is the possibility of a new coming just for the asking. The very need of the people of God brought the new coming we call the second Vatican Council. What the Church can do as the macrocosm of the people of God, we can do in community as a microcosm of the people of God. Each new need of the people of God can invite us to go beyond the way we see ourselves. Our need is the basis for a new coming if we will but call out from the depths of our being with the cry that the Spirit makes possible. We need the combination of wisdom, knowledge, counsel and understanding that brings the integration of the mind of Christ into our way of thinking, and the piety, fortitude, and the fear of the Lord that claims for our living the very heart of Christ as our own. The mind and the heart of Christ give rise to all the fruits of the Spirit.
Love to be shared
We are looking for the Spirit of the Father. Looking at Christ discovers the Father. Christ was such a good teacher, of the Father that he could claim at the Last Supper that all the Father had given him he had passed on to his disciples. He told his disciples, "As the Father has loved me, I have loved you." And he wanted his disciples to live on in that love. The disciples could well have come to the upper room of Pentecost out of fear and out of the memory of what they had shared in Christ. The promise of Christ to send the Spirit and not the qualifications of the Apostles made Pentecost possible. Peter, forgiven by Christ for having denied him, would be the spokesperson of Pentecost. Peter had a need of sharing this Christ who had died for him. What happened in that upper room was not just the rush of the fire of divine love that reached their hearts, but the need of that love to be shared.
Excitement of love
The Pentecost experience is filled with an energy that cannot be restrained. The Spirit of the living God within us breaks free in the sharing of our love. At Pentecost, the Resurrection becomes the dawning awareness of Christ bigger than hearts, and proclaimable with all the excitement of love. We capture in Christ's humanness all the mercy and love of God. Pentecost makes it possible for a dearly departed friend to live on in our lives in the love of our hearts reminding us of our friend.
Wings to words
At Pentecost all the memories of Jesus came together with such a rush, it was like a loud wind gathering in one place. The Apostles could not be quiet. The urgency of their hearts to speak of their Christ gave wings to words that reached the hearts of the many listeners of that day. The tongues of fire set them free. The gathering of the day and the memories shared caught up and freed their spirits to proclaim to any and all the good news of Christ's Resurrection. The Apostles needed Pentecost to become free. What we would say because of our pentecost speaks the louder to hearts seeking to be free. The truth reaching the heart reflects the working of the Spirit. Each of the gifts we possess, given for the needs of the world, relates who we are to the world groaning to know the salvation of Jesus Christ. Christ is revealed in us even as we reach out to the needs of the world under the inspiration of the Spirit. The victory of Christ lives in each of us through our goodness. Christ had to go. As long as he was on the scene, the apostles would always want to be around Christ and would be following his lead. They were not about to initiate anything that would risk their lives or spread the news that God was in the land. They needed something that would galvanize them into action after Christ had left them in the Ascension; they had to be taken from being bystanders and watchers to proclaimers of the Kingdom of God. Christ told the Apostles that he had to go in order that the Spirit might come. He was telling them that there was something missing between what he stood for and their living the fullness of whom he, Christ, was. When someone finally leaves us, all we shared becomes a living memory in us. We know the need of honoring the memory with action.
The awakening
Pentecost brings the awakening of all the Apostles in the excitement of the day we read about in the second chapter of the Acts. Their membership in the human race showed through their fear. We can imagine the doors locked. They could not bring themselves to leave. Confusion reigned. Would Jesus come soon? How will we recognize him this time? What could be done in the meanwhile? Were they all talking at once? Was it Mary who first understood? Did she wait for the others to understand? So many questions then and today capture our hearts before we are ready for the work of Jesus. The Apostles were beset with confusion and doubt. They were held together by expectation and love of Jesus. The "Come, Lord Jesus" prayer of the early community was perhaps first uttered from the hearts of these men at this time.
Tongues of fire
When the Apostles were together, they possessed the presence of Christ missed so desperately when they were alone. This group of ordinary people would be made extraordinary by tongues of fire. The ground swell of fear is swallowed by a heaven swell of love. The doors of their hearts are swung open and the doors of the room hold them no longer. They burst forth from the room charged by the movement of the spirit, charged with spreading the good news. His excitement in sending the Spirit has to be measured by our joys in sharing the good news. Paul says it neatly, "There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same spirit gives them. "(I Cor 12:4) What the apostles received, we receive. New times and new needs call forth the gifts that are so different, but the same in the Spirit, the giver of the Gifts.
New coming
Chapter four of Acts tells us about Peter and John praying: " ... to speak. Your, message with all boldness... grant that wonders and miracles may be performed... "(Acts 4:29,30) The building shook and the sound of the rushing winds made them aware of a new coming of the Spirit. The Pentecost we celebrate as the beginning of the Church was the first of many great needs that would be met by sending the Spirit.
Ongoing life
The Holy Spirit comes to the great needs of the Church, inspiring men and women of every age to use their gifts for the Church. The great civilizations which have come and gone so quickly in the history of the world suggests something special keeps the Church going amidst all the weaknesses and sinfulness of its members. The presence of the Spirit in the Church, constantly renewing us, explains the ongoing life of the Church. The inspiration of the Holy Spirit brings the truth the Church shares with its people. The father of lies will not prevail over the Church. The Spirits presence nourishes and insures the growth of the Church. The Spirit is the love present in the Church in its relationship to the Father and the Son. Limiting the operations of the Spirit to the day of Pentecost would make the Spirit an isolated part of Church history. In truth, the Spirit is the life-giver of every day. The Spirit is in the ''now-ness'' of the mystery of love as the breath and life of the Church.
I am
If we could hear the Holy Spirit speaking to us we might hear. I am the love of the Father, and the Son for each other. I would be your love of God even as I am God's love for you. I am the meeting of love and the reaching beyond the boundaries of life to the meeting of the divine and the human. I am the moment of time that is eternal because it only takes a moment to love forever. I am your deepest wish and the wellspring of all knowledge. I am the truth of who you are, and of whom you will become in the fullness of all love that Christ makes yours in my coming. Forget yourself and all the desires you have of this world and allow me to do the talking for you. Open your heart to the sound of my voice and I will speak for you to the world crying out for the human to make sense. I am the moment before common sense, even as I am the divine logic of all love. Open yourself to hear the truth of the heart you can be in God's love as you accept the truth of yourself.
Let us pray
We claim you, Spirit, as the truth of our hearts. Come, fill our hearts and make us faithful. Your gifts are the heartbeats of Eternal Life in us. Give us open hearts to love even as Christ did. Move us and mold us as lovers of life and all that is holy. Make us noble in the way we reach out to the hurting and the little ones of life.
Teach us what we need to know that we might always possess the truth of Christ in who we are. Let us be totally receiving and totally giving so the life of the Trinity might have a counterpart in us in the Mystery of Indwelling. Make us a giving people so poverty might be driven away forever. Deafen us with the cry of "Abba" from our hearts so we may only hear the word of our hearts calling to our Father in heaven. Speak for us so we might be heard by the Father in the truth of our Christ life within. May each of your gifts be strong in us and may the fruits of your life within us be seen by all. Enkindle in us the fire of divine love and never let it go out. Recreate us anew in Love. Let the Sacred Heart be our heart. Amen.
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