Posts

The Gift of the Holy Spirit

Pentecost is a Feast of Love.  It is the feast of the Canticle of Canticles where the Bridegroom comes to kiss his Bride. Today the Church cries out to her Bridegroom for a divine kiss, a kiss from the mouth of God.   It is this kiss entrusted to frail humanity that makes all the difference in the world and in our lives.  It is by this kiss that God discloses the depths of his love, that He surrenders His Holy Spirit to each of us in the most unique and particular way.   It is the kiss God entrusts to humanity from the Cross.

The Holy Spirit is the life of the soul.  He is the great gift that the Risen Lord breaths into the world.   When lovers kiss, it is as if they are trying to breath their spirits into each other.  Each wants the other to completely possess the gift of who they are.   It is by way of a holy kiss that Christ breaths his Holy Spirit into the Church.

The whole Church and each of us as members of this mystical Body, through this same Gift, want to give everything we have to Christ and find in ourselves the power to do so and the inner conviction that we do not want to have it any other way.  This is because with the Gift of the Holy Spirit we realize this is exactly the way God has loved us in Christ Jesus.

Wherever the Spirit blows, the most beautiful affections are ignited in our humanity.  The Spirit of the Father and the Son moves us with a passion so sacred that it raises us up above ourselves.  Such holy desires caused by the Fire of God in us allow us to participate in the very life of God.

The more humble we are, the more the kiss of Christ permeates the deep places of our hearts.  He won the right to enter into these deep places, to breath his Holy Spirit into these depths, by emptying Himself until he became like us.  In solidarity with our humanity, having embraced this most frail work of his creation to his Uncreated Nature in his Divine Person, He allowed himself be completely vulnerable to us – like a lover who attempts to disclose his love to the beloved.  Spurned and rejected from the beginning, He would not give up on the friendship He yearned to share with us.  He offered his kiss to a distrustful humanity by humbling Himself in the face of our pride and overcame our hostility to Him by his death.  When we gaze on Him who died for us, always we see His arms are wide open, ready to embrace us.  He waits to kiss us with the Gift of His Spirit whenever we allow our hearts to be pierced by his love.

Will we surrender to his kiss?  Will we allow ourselves to be caught up in his love?  True, the more we offer ourselves in love, we find ourselves dying to our old way of life. It is the pathway of surrender and trust. We are afraid of this — abandoning our old way of life leads somewhere with which we are not familiar. But the kiss of Christ is so beautiful, so life giving, it is worth this death a thousand times over.  Let Him kiss you with the Kisses of his Mouth! 

/5 Comments/by

How Do We Know God’s Will?

Many people after discovering the faith soon realize that it is sometimes difficult to discern God’s will in a given situation.  Most people think that knowing God’s will is impossible.  After all, He gave us our natural capacity to reason and He has revealed Himself to us – so the rest is up to us.  There is some truth to this, especially at the beginning of the spiritual life.  But anyone who tries to make progress in our pilgrimage of faith this way is soon discouraged.  Following Christ often requires us to act in ways far beyond what common sense would dictate.  This is why St. Paul urges, “calling to mind the mercy of God, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, your spiritual worship.  Do not conform yourselves to this age, but live a transformed life by the renewal of your minds – so that you may discern what is God’s will — what is good, pleasing and perfect” (Romans 12:1-2).
As long as we try to live like everybody else, as long as we think like everyone else, our ability to know God’s will is severely impeded.   The mercy of God reveal by Christ crucified gives us a different standard.  The pathway to knowing the will of God is found in loving imitation of the Lord who laid down his life for his friends.  God’s will is found in the Cross.  
We can find the Cross first of all through loving sacrifice no matter how small or insignificant or hidden from the world.  In fact, the more hidden the better.  In the old days, this was called “offering it up.”  Whatever is the least desired, least comfortable, least understood – God’s will is hidden there waiting to be discovered.    Whenever we renounce anything out of love and devotion to the Lord, whenever we bear a trial for his glory, whenever we offer up our internal pain and continue out of faithfulness to Him – this action opens up space in our hearts and minds, space for God’s will to flow into our will.  Paradoxically, this never overthrows our freedom but expands it, liberating us from selfishness and anything else that prevents us from loving to the full.
The Cross of Christ is also found whenever we are moved to do something beautiful for God.  It was in her effort to do something beautiful for God that Teresa of Calcutta heard the Lord call her to be his light.  She discovered in her efforts to do something beautiful for God new facets of His Holy Will that would have otherwise remained hidden.   John of the Cross lived by this same wisdom and marveled at the immense horizon of love and freedom God’s will contains.  He came to counsel those who were seeking the Will of God, “Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love.” 
/2 Comments/by

What Draws God to the Human Heart?

Despite all the brokenness and misery that mark human existence, God is drawn to the human heart.  There is something about humanity that He patiently loves and profoundly respects.  He gently attempts to persuade us constantly but never imposes his omnipotence.  In the depths of our being, He knocks.  Ever confident that our indifference and rejection are not our last word, He awaits us.  If He humbly requests our hope, it is only because He hopes in us even more.  But why?  What draws Him?
It seems He knows, better than even we ourselves, the greatness of the human vocation.  To help us fulfill our great high calling, He pours out every spiritual blessing so that even our malice and hatred are taken up into his great plan for us.  And, this is true not only historically in the visible events through the course of time, but also mysteriously in the invisible recesses that run through the human heart.
To accomplish this, the almighty power of God clothed itself in weakness.  Vulnerable placing himself into our hands, He found a sure pathway into the depths of human poverty.  The closer He came, the greater we felt that primordial enmity.  The seed of distrust once sewn before the dawn of history had become a forest of ignorance in which we hid ourselves.  He continued with undaunted hope, ready to pay any price to restore our dignity so that we might be free to achieve the great purpose for which we were created.
Our supreme act of aggression against Him, when we tortured and crucified Him, He transforms into the means of all grace.  All we need is to repent, humble ourselves and accept his forgiveness – He gives us the power to live a transformed life, to do something beautiful for God, to make an offering of ourselves which is truly pleasing to Him.  Such is His divine plan, that we should, through following Christ in love, become the praise of his glory.
Elisabeth of the Trinity believes there is one person who did this in a singular way – someone who not only leaves us an example to follow but prays for us – that we might live so as to draw the Lord to us in new, unimaginable and beautiful ways.   Mary, the Mother of the Lord, is called in tradition “Faithful Virgin” and it is the faithfulness of the Virgin Mary which Elisabeth sees as dynamic.  She connects faithfulness to God in love with humility – the virtue by which we esteem ourselves rightly.  In our selfish and power obsessed culture, this connection for the spiritual life is even more relevant today.  Faithful and humble, Mary “drew down upon herself the delight of the Holy Trinity …The Father bending down to this beautiful creature, who was so unaware of her own beauty, willed that she be the Mother in time of Him whose Father He is in eternity” (Heaven in Faith, 39).
These words about Mary contain a great truth for anyone who wants to serve the Lord.  Something about being faithful in our weakness is beautiful to God.  This is  the pathway to the cross, the threshold to union with Him.  It means to believe in love and to love, to not lose hope even in failure, but to strive, by God’s grace, to rise again.  When we go on this pilgrimage of faith, we not only discover the the victory of good over evil in our own lives, but through our surrendered weakness and his indomitable hope in us, this triumph of love extends to the whole world.  
/4 Comments/by