Feast of Pentecost, Cycle B
St. Mark Parish, Fallston
May 27, 2012
The Holy Spirit:
Who? What? How?
By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato
Powdered
Milk and Eggs
Back
in the 1940’s, during World War II, many American soldiers were stationed on
islands in the Pacific Ocean.
They lived in tents and did not have
refrigerators or any conveniences at all.
The challenge was that nutritionists wanted our troops to have food like
milk and eggs.
These foods obviously required refrigeration and
that was not possible for our soldiers on those islands. So, in response to this, a new form of food
was developed: powdered food.
Eggs and milk were powdered, put into packages
and sent to the Pacific. Then, simply by
adding water to the powder, the soldiers had eggs and milk in a form that could
be served every day and without refrigeration.
Who the
Holy Spirit Is
Now,
it may sound strange, but the development of the powdered eggs and milk helps
us to appreciate who the Holy Spirit is in our lives.
The Spirit is God with us in a new way or, you
might say, under a new form. For thirty
years, God was with us in the person of Jesus, but because Jesus was truly
human, his presence among us was limited in time.
And so, if God were going to continue to be
present among us, it would have to be in a new way, in a new form. This is what Pentecost is all about.
Pentecost marks the moment when God began to be
with us not in the physical body of Jesus, but in the spiritual presence of the
Holy Spirit. Changing regular eggs and
milk into a powder helps us to understand the change in the way God is present
with us.
So Pentecost marks the time when God begins to
be present not as someone standing alongside us, but as someone living inside
us. This is who the Holy Spirit is.
What the
Holy Spirit Does
And
this leads us to the question: what does the Spirit do?
Today’s passage from the Acts of the Apostles
describes the Spirit “as a strong, driving wind that was heard
all through the house where the disciples were gathered.” We all know that wind is beyond our
control and perhaps that is why it tells us something of what the Holy Spirit
does.
Like the wind, God is beyond our control. The wind signifies God acting, God doing
something independent of us.
The Book of Genesis describes God’s action as a
wind blowing and bringing about all of creation including human beings and
human life. Here at Pentecost, the wind
speaks of God creating persons of faith and a community of faith.
So
the wind, the Spirit, makes us alive in God and alive in Christ Jesus. This is what the Spirit does even today
through the sacraments and personal prayer, through the Scripture, and even
through wisdom and compassion of one another.
How the Holy Spirit Affect
Us
In
doing this, how does the Holy Spirit affect us as persons?
Today’s reading from Acts says that “tongues
as of fire appeared which came to rest on each one of them. All were filled with the Holy Spirit.
“They began to express themselves in foreign
tongues.” In other words, the Holy
Spirit enabled them to communicate with others, regardless of who they were.
The Spirit creates a restlessness within us that
almost drives us – like a driving wind – to overcome divisions and
hostility. The Spirit drives us to seek
oneness with others and not to rest at peace unless we have done all we can to
accomplish this.
The Spirit moves us to build bridges and seek
common ground with others. This
restlessness and this quest for oneness is how the Spirit affects us as
persons.
Conclusion
So,
who is the Holy Spirit? The Spirit is God with and
within us in a new way.
What
does the Holy Spirit do? The Spirit creates us into
persons of faith and a community of faith.
And
how does the Holy Spirit affect us? One primary way is that the
Spirit moves us to experience our oneness in God with all persons.
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