After Jesus was crucified, the disciples hid away behind locked doors for fear of suffering the same fate themselves. When Jesus rose from the dead and revealed himself to them, the disciples still remained in hiding. But on Pentecost they went forth to proclaim the Good News and they kept on proclaiming it, despite threats and persecution. In fact, eleven of the twelve apostles were martyred for their faith.
What made the difference was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Once they received the Holy Spirit, they had the courage and the strength to go forth. They were empowered for ministry. In the same way, we too derive our spiritual strength from the grace we receive through the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the Holy Spirit is the animating principle of the Church.
But, we might ask, how do we receive the Holy Spirit? The answer is that the grace of the Holy Spirit comes to us in a myriad ways through the life of the Church but the primary means is through the Seven Sacraments. In baptism, we receive an initial outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which is strengthened and sealed in Confirmation. In the Eucharist, we receive, among many other blessings, the daily strength we need to live out our Christian lives. In the Sacrament of Penance, the Holy Spirit cleanses us spiritually. In the Anointing of the Sick, we are given the grace we need to endure illness and sometimes we receive physical healing too. The Sacraments of Matrimony and Holy Orders confer the graces needed to live out each vocation.
In addition to the Sacraments, we are given a multitude of blessings through the prayer and devotional life of the Church. To open our lives fully to these blessings of the Holy Spirit, we need to cultivate a private prayer life and we should also pray together with others on a regular basis. The more we weave prayer into the rhythm of each day, the more our lives will be imbued with the grace and power of the Holy Spirit.
The Catholic Church also recognizes seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, which we receive through baptism and Confirmation: Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Knowledge, Fortitude, Piety, and Fear of the Lord. How these gifts work in our lives has been described in different ways by various commentators. I will offer a brief, shorthand description of each gift here.
Knowledge, Understanding, Wisdom, and Counsel are closely connected. Knowledge gives us the facts of our faith and helps us to differentiate between earthly and heavenly realities. Understanding goes one step further and helps us to connect the dots, comprehending the overarching picture. Wisdom enables us to see life more and more from God's perspective, increasingly aligning our way of thinking with God's will. Counsel gives us the grace to apply all of the above and make the right decision in each circumstance.
Fortitude, which can also be called courage, gives us the strength to make the right choice and to keep pursuing the right course of action. Piety and Fear of the Lord both highlight the end goal of where correct thinking and acting are taking us. Piety helps us to give God his due and to treat God and the things of God with true reverence. Doing so will also clear away the obstacles we have in our hearts, which are blocking, to lesser or greater degrees, the grace of God in our lives. Fear of the Lord, the seventh gift, is not a cringing, servile fear, living in dread of God striking us down, but a fear of losing the infinite, eternal love of God through our own selfish actions.
All of us receive all seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, but each of us might be predisposed toward some gifts more than toward others. To what extent each of the seven gifts will come to fruition in each of us will depend on how deeply we open our lives to the Holy Spirit. Let us pray daily for these seven gifts to show forth in how we live our lives from day to day.
The Catholic Church also recognizes twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit, which are charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, long-suffering, gentleness, faith, modesty, self-control, and chastity. One way to see how well our lives are aligned with God's will and how fully we have opened our lives to the Holy Spirit is to take stock of how many of these twelve fruits are evident in our lives. If we do not see many, that means we have much more room to grow, through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Each morning, let us invite the Holy Spirit into our day. Let us open ourselves to the grace of the Holy Spirit by weaving prayer into the rhythm of each day. At the end of each day, let us examine how deeply our decisions and actions reflected the grace of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. Let us beseech the Holy Spirit so that each day can be like Pentecost in our lives.
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The text of the readings for Pentecost Sunday can be found at the USCCB website.
Photo Credit: Photo Credit: Colmar - Unterlinden Museum - Altarpiece of the Dominicans, Childhood and Passion of Christ - Martin Schongauer (ca 1445-1491) & Atelier, ca 1480 - Oil on wood panel - Pentecost, descent of the Holy Spirit, from Wikimedia Commons.
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