During the last few Sundays of Easter our liturgical readings reveal Jesus pointed towards Pentecost before he returned to the Father, discussed on “Season of the Spirit” about this Gospel promise fulfilled. Living Seasons of Change hosted by Patti Brunner with Monsignor David LeSieur, weaves the topics of the liturgical calendar, combining God’s love for his people and personal testimony, with the teachings of the Catholic Church. We are affected today by Easter, the Ascension and the fulfillment of the promise of Jesus to send to us the Holy Spirit. Christ came to earth to bring redemption, salvation and restoration of the people to God through grace. The result: the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. You can listen to their radio broadcast originally broadcast 4-20-2007 on KDUA Catholic Radio and Padua Media. Continue reading for script and other notes. Audio Link: May-C
Script
Patti Brunner: Welcome to Living Seasons of Change. I’m Patti Brunner. Today, Monsignor David LeSieur and I will stir up the flame of the Holy Spirit as we discuss how the end of the Easter season and feast of the Ascension prepares us for the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost. Welcome, Monsignor!
Monsignor David: Thanks Patti, I’m glad to be here. You know, the Season of Easter tells the purpose for the coming of Christ to the earth: redemption, salvation, restoration of the people to God through grace, and then the result: the dwelling of the Holy Spirit within us.
Patti: A lot of the readings of the second half of the Easter season are geared towards Pentecost and the Holy Spirit. Our listeners can find this season’s readings and the references from our show today at PatriarchMinistries.com.
Monsignor David: At a certain point of the Easter season it does start pointing toward Pentecost because Jesus is quoted more from John’s Gospel, referring more to the Spirit. During this liturgical season we also celebrate the Ascension. Some years ago the Vatican gave permission for each diocese to choose whether to celebrate the Ascension on the traditional Thursday or to move it to a Sunday. Our diocese chose to move it, thus this year instead of the 7th Sunday of Easter we will hear the readings of the Ascension.
Patti: Jesus came, he lived, he died on the cross, he rose, but then he has to leave to send the Holy Spirit back to us. He is promising all through the readings “I will send you” and “When I send you”. And “this is what’s going to happen when I send you” the Spirit. We have the redemption fulfilled in Jesus’ resurrection. And then we have the promise from Jesus.
Monsignor David: And he says in John 14 [i], one of the Pentecost gospels, “I’ll send you another Advocate”. Jesus is the first Advocate with the Father, and he will send us another advocate who will remind us of all he has taught us, and tell us even more. And He says also in Luke 24[ii], the gospel on the Ascension, “You will be clothed in glory from on high” He talks about waiting for the gift of the Father. He ascends into heaven. We have ascension accounts[iii] in the Gospels of Mark and Luke and then Luke mentions it in the Acts of the Apostles again. In both of Luke’s writings, he promises to send the Spirit.
Patti: In Mark’s account of the Ascension Jesus promises the gifts or action of the Spirit when he tells them the signs that will accompany their belief: driving out demons, the gift of tongues[iv], protection from deadly things, and healing. Yet to send us these gifts, Jesus has to ascend.
Monsignor David: Yes, Patti, unless Jesus leaves and sits at the Father’s right hand, the Spirit could not be sent. Jesus can be much more present in the world in the Spirit than he could if he were walking around in his body, because by nature a body is limited. Even Jesus’s glorified body would be limited. His risen body had fewer limitations than ours, its true, but it was still a physical body. He could eat fish, you could touch him, and all that. But in the Spirit, Jesus can be everywhere at once.
Patti: Wow, that goes beyond our finite thinking of space and time! In that Gospel reading from John, the 7th Sunday that our diocese won’t hear, Jesus says: “Father, as you are in me and I am in you…[v]” And that leads us to think of the Trinity, which we’ll discuss in our next show; where one person of the Trinity is, so is the others.
Monsignor David: “When you’ve seen me, you have seen the Father[vi]” “The Father and I are one”[vii] says Jesus.
Patti: But there is something in the order of things, where Jesus takes his rightful place, as a man, beside the Father. That’s what the whole redemption was about; so that “man” could be reconnected to God the Father, just like Adam was connected to him, but even better!
Monsignor David: Jesus is the new Adam. Adam and Eve were always intended to be with the Father, in the garden. They were sent out, after having disobeyed God. And it is only in the new Adam (Jesus) that the old Adam could get back where he belonged, with the Father. And that’s the case with all of us. We belong with God, but only though Jesus could we ever get there. Because he did the Father’s will perfectly; and yet he was one of us, fully human, except without sin. It is that sinlessness that pleases the Father so much. One of the Sunday Eucharistic prayers says “That you might see and love in us what you see and love in Christ.”[viii] Of course that prayer is directed to God the Father. There is this idea when the Father looks at his son, Jesus, he sees us; and when he sees us, he sees Jesus. We’re clothed in Christ through Baptism. We become one with Christ; in his suffering and his death, and his resurrection. And that’s what the Father sees. We become so “one” with Christ, in faith and baptism, that in Christ, we go back to the Father where we belong in the first place. In a way, since there is no time with God, we are already there. In God’s eyes, we are there already. We don’t experience that fully, but it’s a great thing.
Patti: It sure is! As Jesus ascends to the Father he completes the process that makes us worthy to be a dwelling place for the Most High. The apostles relied on Jesus. As soon as he was gone they realized how much they needed him. We all need Jesus but his Ascension calls us to step into the fullness of our inheritance. Sometimes we have to be prodded. And so it’s like when you are part of a family business and you stand in the shadow of your father who runs things. When your dad dies and leaves the inheritance to you, you’ve got big shoes to fill. But you try your best; you have the memory of how your father did things, you apply what you’ve been taught, and then your own uniqueness comes into it. Jesus left us, so that we could inherit his role.
Monsignor David: We’re never really left behind by God; God is always with us and he has promised us many times in Scripture “I’ll be with you always.” His presence is invisible but that calls out the best in us. It calls out our faith, it calls out trust and it causes us to trust in the Spirit. If Jesus were here we’d say, “You do it! You do it!
Patti: Right, I still say that!
Monsignor David: But he’ll say “no, you do it with my help. I’ll let the Spirit help you do that. Look what has been accomplished in his name with his invisible presence.
Patti: Jesus prepared us for his leaving by witnessing the gifts of the Spirit to us all through his life. People marveled at him at age 12 because of his wisdom. Matthew’s Gospel reminds us of his healing gifts, often telling us that all were healed. Mighty deeds reported in John’s Gospel start with the miracle at Cana and go through to the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Those gifts of the Spirit manifest in Jesus, a true man. I think he is showing us how to imitate him, in our humanness, to being filled with the Spirit.
Monsignor David: Well, see we have the same Spirit that he had. Maybe you or I don’t have all those gifts by ourselves but as a Church, as a body, we do because we are the body of Christ. What gives life to the Body of Christ is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the soul of the church. And the same Spirit gave Jesus those gifts. Wisdom, understanding, knowledge and piety and fear of the Lord, he had all those. You know, “zeal for your house fills me”, when he cleansed the temple; we have that too. Maybe you and I don’t have all those gifts to the extent that Jesus had them; we probably don’t have that much faith. He had total faith. But I think as a church, or maybe even as a congregation, our parish does have those gifts. Here at St. Vincent de Paul we have a healing mass once a month and people come and pray. Now maybe some of the other churches in town may manifest some of these gifts better than we do, because they just claim those gifts and they go after them. They have the gifts of tongues and interpretation of tongues, particularly many of the Pentecostal churches. We have the same thing, though. Catholics have all those gifts, if we call upon them and trust them.
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Monsignor David: Welcome back. Patti Brunner and I are talking about the Spirit and how Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit. We are in the era of the Holy Spirit. The era of the Church on earth is the era of the Spirit as it guides us and informs our actions. We’re called to “trust that Spirit”. As Paul says in Romans 8:26 [ix], the Spirit prays within us in ways we don’t how. So the Spirit is doing a lot for us that we don’t even realize and God loves us so much more than we ever imagine.
Patti: I relate the interceding, inexpressible groanings of the Spirit to the gift of tongues because the Spirit prays with words we don’t understand. I remember the first time I met someone who professed to pray in tongues.
Monsignor David: Were they Catholic?
Patti: Oh yes. And I was just fascinated about it. And I asked him if he knew what he was saying and he said, well no. Even though I was curious I did not pursue the matter. Later on, I actually heard a priest and a good friend pray in tongues. Now, many years later, I, too, am able to pray in tongues. I remember my first surrender to the prayer language of the Spirit, I was in my bedroom.
Monsignor David: Did you know what you were saying?
Patti: No! In fact, there has only been a few times when I have actually known what I was saying, I guess that’s when that gift of interpretation of tongues comes in. But, generally, no.
Monsignor David: And if it’s praise, you don’t need to know what you’re saying.
Patti: Right! You just know that you are praying the perfect prayer. One time when I was praising and singing in tongues I envisioned Jesus sitting on his throne and I was whispering, in my prayer language, into the ear of Jesus. And as I continued to whisper to Jesus I realized I was speaking the words of the Father to Jesus via the Holy Spirit! As the words entered Jesus they ministered to the Body of Christ! As I realized that I am a part of the Body of Christ, I experienced the Father’s words. So, the words coming out of my mouth, formed by the Spirit, were the Father’s words to Jesus. And since I am a part of the Body of Christ, his words were also to me. It was a wonderful experience.
Monsignor David: When we go to mass and praise God, even if we don’t use tongues, we are the body of Christ praising the Father. All the prayers of the Mass are addressed to God the Father, through Jesus in the Holy Spirit. Jesus gave us this prayer, to say to God the Father. He is telling us what to say, in other words. And the Spirit draws us together to pray to the Father through the Son. So the Trinity is very much a part of that just like it was in your prayer experience.
Patti: Our inheritance from Jesus is without measure; there’s more than enough for all. The Holy Spirit himself reveals “how much” to us as we accept & grow. On the 6th Sunday of Easter Jesus promises that the Spirit will teach us everything and remind us of all we were told.[x] We now find “Hints” to recognize these gifts promised in Isaiah[xi]: wisdom, fortitude, understanding, and so on, then we recognize them as witnessed by Jesus’ life: wisdom, healing, mighty deeds, and from there, awareness of the Holy Spirit explodes in the early church after Pentecost as the “understanding” gift manifests and releases various gifts within the Church.
Monsignor David: We use the reading from Isaiah at Confirmation.
Patti: On Pentecost we again hear about the Advocate who will teach us everything[xii]. The Pentecost Vigil’s Gospel of John [xiii] tells us that “Rivers of living water shall flow from within him who believes in the Spirit”. We have talked about the rivers of living water being Baptism but also it is the living water of the Spirit.
Monsignor David: You know every one of us needs a set time and a set place to pray everyday, because the more you pray the more you become sensitive and aware of the presence of Christ in your life. He is always there. He surrounds you every moment and you don’t realize it. Someone I heard, I think it was Abbot Jerome of Subiaco Abbey, he was talking about that passage from Romans 8, which I mentioned earlier, where the Spirit prays within us, and utterings you cannot understand, and he said, “The Spirit is like a river flowing in us all the time. The river never stops flowing, it is always going. Whether we’re asleep or awake, whether we’re aware of it or not aware of it, it’s always there”. And then the abbot said, “When you pray, when you consciously take time to pray, what you are doing is, you are jumping into the river and you are swimming along with it. You are in that river yourself, consciously. And then when you quit praying, go to work or whatever, you get out of the water, but the Spirit, the river, always flows, it is always there. And that helped me and I have repeated it many times when I have taught class about prayer. It is comforting to know that the Spirit is always flowing in us. And to be consciously aware of the Spirit or to be consciously aware of the presence of Christ in your life is to be in that river with them.
Patti: That’s a beautiful image. And that river is our gift of Easter, of the Resurrection.
Monsignor David: Yes, it’s that living water. The Spirit is the living water. We have more than we think we do. God is so generous with us. It’s unimaginable.
Patti: The specific gifts of the Holy Spirit listed in scripture, in Mark, in Acts, in Romans, in 1st Corinthians are certainly part of God’s generosity. Why aren’t they in wide-spread use?
Monsignor David: We have Catholic Charismatics who depend upon those gifts, who call them forth, who speak in tongues, I’ve seen it. You’ve seen it. It could just be that we don’t claim those gifts as much because we feel like other people have, other churches have, and that’s their ‘thing’. In some ways we’re kind of “heady” and intellectual with our faith. But that is not a Catholic hallmark. A Catholic hallmark is that we are very earthy and very symbolic. We have symbols; we have bread, wine, water, oil and we use all these elements of the earth in our faith and our symbol structure and so it would fit very well, I think, if Catholics were to call upon the gifts of the Spirit more and claim them and use them and not let some other churches have them to themselves. Have you ever been involved in the Charismatic Renewal?
Patti: I have. But to me the whole church is charismatic; the whole church operates because of the charisms, which means “gifts of grace”. We all operate in those gifts of grace as we work to build up the church. How about you Monsignor LeSieur? Have you ever been involved in Charismatic Renewal?
Monsignor David: I have, too, in the past. I was very involved in it when I was a young priest. We had a prayer group there in Ft. Smith. Although I prayed for it, I never received the gift of tongues. I went to Charismatic priests’ conference in Steubenville, Ohio in 1978. I bet there were 900 priests from all over the country and the world there.
Patti: You know, there was a huge outpouring of the Spirit in the ‘70’s. I missed it. Mine didn’t hit until the 90’s. But there it was, in the Catholic Church just a very wide awakening to the Spirit and the manifestations of the various gifts of the Spirit. The manifestation of the gifts responds to our openness to it, I guess, because we are a Spirit-filled, Spirit-led Church, and we have been since Pentecost. I think Jesus is trying to get us ready to step into accepting more, more that he has given to us through our inheritance of the Holy Spirit.
Monsignor David: I’ve been talking to some of the Confirmation candidates. One thing I’ve left with some of them is this little example: I said, “You know, we all have the Spirit from Baptism, but Confirmation confirms and strengthens those gifts. If you’ll think about yourself as being a little boat, a sail boat, and the Spirit as the wind, if you don’t raise your sails, you’ll just wallow around on the water and the tide will take you, where you have no way of knowing. But if you raise your sail, and let the Spirit’s wind fill that sail, you can go places, you can go where God wants you to go. But it’s up to us. The Spirit is out there, he very present in our lives, but if we don’t access, so to speak, or let the Spirit have some movement in our lives then we might not accomplish what he wants us to do. So, we have a part to play in that, to willingly invite the Spirit’s action in our lives, to open ourselves up to it. And that might frighten people, maybe even subconsciously, to say, “Well, gee, if I let the Spirit do what he wants in my life he might take me somewhere I don’t want to go!” But that’s the whole point; because if he takes you there, it’s a good place to go.
Patti: Exactly, that’s right. It takes surrender. We have to surrender to the Holy Spirit to allow the fullness, of what Jesus left us, to manifest.
Monsignor David: Yes, because, see, that’s the way Jesus lived his life. He was totally open to his Father and to the Spirit. I think he modeled that very fully in his life on earth. And the apostles after Pentecost did, too. The scripture says the Spirit snatched up Philip and took him over here, and after he saw the Ethiopian eunuch and baptized him the Spirit took him somewhere else.[xiv] He had done all he needed to do for the eunuch. Peter and Paul were filled with the Spirit but still had their own ideas. They had the Council of Jerusalem to discuss whether or not you had to become Jewish first to become Christian. A lot of the people thought you had to become Jewish, to follow the Law, and get circumcised. Paul said “No” the Spirit is bigger than that. The Spirit guided the authority in making Church law that opened doors for the Gentiles to be Christians.
Patti: Maybe we separate a little bit if we think that the particular gifts of Holy Spirit are set apart from everything else. Whereas if we look at it, like you said, we are all Spirit-filled as we are baptized, as we are reconciled with the Lord, as we are confirmed. We all have these gifts operating in us to a degree that could be deepened. We recognize where the Holy Spirit manifests in the lives of the saints, where the gift of miracles manifests. But we all have little daily miracles if we would just look at them and recognize the Spirit operating in our lives.
Monsignor David: The Spirit is always acting through us. When we are baptized, we are anointed as priest, prophet and king with chrism and then we are anointed again at Confirmation so that those gifts might be strengthened. We act in the name of Jesus, often without realizing it. Jesus is a part of our actions. We are acting in the Spirit all of the time unless we are consciously sinning. And then we block off the Spirit.
Patti: We can invite Christ to manifest the Spirit within us, when we pray. Prayer opens us to more awareness of the Spirit. The Catechisms tells us that charisms are special gifts of grace. Why do people refuse the fullness of the gifts of the Spirit? Why does our generation seem not to know the Spirit?
Monsignor David: Why do you think so, Patti?
Patti: Just as individuals, not as Church, because the Church has the charisms, the Church accepts them; why do we reject as an individual?
Monsignor David: I just wonder if it’s not just a negative thing, I don’t want this to sound wrong, but it could just be we don’t want to appear too Protestant or too Pentecostal or too charismatic.
Patti: The other thing is that it is very emotional and sometimes we seem to be more intellectual in our faith.
Monsignor David: That is kind of what I was getting at a few minutes ago when I said we’re kind of “heady”. I lot of us don’t trust our emotions. And the Charismatic Renewal is very emotional. In fact some people think it is too emotional and depends too much on that. There has to be a balance in everything.
Patti: I have come across people who feel inadequate; it’s not the opposite of pride, or that they feel unworthy. They’ll say, “You can do that, but I can’t. I can’t receive these gifts.”
Monsignor David: It might be an excuse, too. I know I have felt that way. People have seemed so gifted. And people do have different gifts than we do and it’s true that we have gifts that they don’t have. It’s the comparison of our gifts that causes issues.
Patti: It’s the old Cain & Abel thing; “well God loves you more because he accepted your gift more”, and we can’t get past that to comprehend that we are made uniquely and so the gift that the Lord has for us is not going to look like the gift manifested in someone else, even though it’s the same river and it’s the Spirit in us. But we usually want what someone else has.
Monsignor David: Its jealousy I guess or envy. Sometimes, it’s kind of a spiritual “poor me” attitude. But it’s just not necessary. Be thankful for what you have got. And use what you have got. And the more you use it the more you will see that there is a lot you can do with the gifts you have.
Patti: Sometimes, you can become prideful, and so the Spirit kind of pulls back. The real problem is when we reject the gifts of the Holy Spirit; we refuse God’s grace and thus we cannot do everything he has called us to do. I am thinking if we reject gifts of the Holy Spirit we do not really know the Father and Jesus, for once we are in relationship with Father and Son, the Holy Spirit will dwell in us, and fill us with his gifts. So the key is to pray to surrender to whatever the Lord has for us. The way I figure it, if the Holy Spirit didn’t think the gifts were good for us, he wouldn’t have given them in the first place.
Monsignor David: I read somewhere years ago, there was a Belgian cardinal during WWI, during the early part of the 20th century, his name was Cardinal Mercier[xv]. He had a secret of sanctity and his secret of sanctity was to spend a few minutes every day asking the Holy Spirit[xvi] to help him. Real simple! He said if you will do that every day, the Spirit will guide you in all the ways you need to go, and protect you, and give you courage. Yes, we probably don’t do that enough, we don’t take the Spirit seriously enough to say, “Today I just put myself at your disposal. Send me where you want me to go”. And, if you look at the end of the day, if you think back having said that prayer, you might be surprised. It might not be anything astounding, maybe you talked to someone at Walgreen’s you hadn’t seen in a while. And you start putting the pieces together and the Spirit is a part of all of that and those are graced moments.
Patti: There is another prayer to the Holy Spirit. The first time I found it was in a New American Bible that my mother gave me in the 1970’s when that translation first came out. It is next to the dedication of the bible by a young Pope John Paul II. The Cursillo movement uses it, too, in the little pilgrim handbook. “Come Holy Spirit fill the hearts …”
Monsignor David: Yes, Patti. It’s “Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, enkindle in them the fire of your love, send forth your Spirit and they shall be created and they shall renew the face of the earth.”
Patti: In conclusion, it is by the Holy Spirit that we truly come to know God. He teaches us every thing. He invites us to know him. He empowers us to share that with others. The Spirit teaches us about God and then we want to please God and so we accept his gifts and use them, those gifts, the charisms, the understanding, the wisdom, the healing, the miracles, and we use those to please God and to give him glory. And then we have such peace, and we experience the kingdom, like in the Our Father “thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” We experience it.
Monsignor David: And that is what Jesus came to do. He came to preach the kingdom, the presence of God in the world, and he sent us the Spirit to enable that to happen. We are now in the world to preach the kingdom, to live the kingdom, to help people experience the presence of God right here and now because, otherwise, God can really be in our heads. You read him in the bible, your read the catechism, that can all be head stuff. Even the bible is head stuff until you start living it, and believing it, and putting it into practice. And that is what the Spirit helps us to do. He helps bring our faith from our heads to our hearts and then to our feet and our hands. To know God, which is the head, to love God in the heart, to serve God with our hands and our feet; that’s the movement when I think of the Spirit.
Patti: Monsignor, will you close our show with a blessing?
Monsignor David: [closing blessing]
Liturgical Readings for May C
5th Sunday Easter
Acts 14:21-27 appointed elders, called church together and reported
Revelation 21:1-5a “a new heaven and a new earth” “no more death” “all things new”
John 13:31-33a, 34-35 “God will glorify” “love one another” “will know that you are my disciples”
6th Sunday of Easter
Acts 15:1-2, 22-29 Mosaic practice-Gentile rules
Revelation 21: 10-14, 22-23 “city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven” twelve gates
John 14:23-29 Holy Spirit “will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you”
Ascension of the Lord
Acts 1:1-11 “you will receive power…he was lifted up and a cloud took him”
Hebrews 9:24-28; 10:19-23 will appear a second time or Ephesians 1:17-23 him as head over all things to the church which is his body
Luke 24:46-53 “stay…until you are clothed with power from on high”
7th Sunday of Easter
Acts 7:55-60 Stephen: “I see…the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God”
Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20 “Alpha and the Omega” “Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come'”
John 17:20-26 “Father you are in me and I in you”
Pentecost Vigil
Genesis 11:1-9 Tower of Babel OR Exodus 19:3-8a, 16-20b “Moses…if you hearken to my voice” OR Ezekiel 37:1-14 dry bones Ezekiel OR Joel 3:1-5 “sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men…dream, young men…visions” a remnant
Romans 8:22-27 “Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings”
John 7:37-39 “Rivers of living water will flow from within him who believes in me…the Spirit”
Pentecost
Acts 2:1-11 “tongues of fire…speak different tongues”
Romans 8:8-17 “you are not in flesh…but spirit…if only the Spirit of God Dwells in you” ‘Abba” OR 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-11113 “different …gifts but same Spirit” “to each the manifestation of the Spirit is given”
John 14:15-16, 23b-26 The Advocate…will teach you everything” OR John 20:19-23 “Receive the Holy Spirit”
References
[i] John 14:16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate * to be with you always
[ii] Luke 24: 49 “And (behold) I am sending the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”
[iii] Luke 24: 49 And (behold) I am sending the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” 50 Then he led them (out) as far as Bethany, raised his hands, and blessed them. 51 As he blessed them he parted from them and was taken up to heaven.
Mark 16: 17 These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons, they will speak new languages. 18 They will pick up serpents (with their hands), and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”19 So then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God.
Acts 1: 8 “But you will receive power when the holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” 9 When he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight.”
[iv] Mark 16:17 “gift of tongues” New Jerusalem Bible translation
[v] John 17:20-26 “Father you are in me and I in you”
[vi] John 14: 9 “Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”
[vii] John 10: 30 “The Father and I are one.”
[viii] Eucharistic Prayer – Sunday Ordinary Time Eucharistic Prayer #7
[ix] Romans 8: 26 In the same way, the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.
[x] John 14:23-29 Holy Spirit “will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you”
[xi] “The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him: a spirit of wisdom and of understanding, a spirit of counsel and of strength, a spirit of knowledge and of fear of the Lord and his delight shall be the fear of the Lord.”
[xii] John 14:15-16, 23b-26 The Advocate…will teach you everything”
[xiii] John 7:37-39 “Rivers of living water will flow from within him who believes in me…the Spirit”
[xiv] Acts 8: 26 * Then the angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, “Get up and head south on the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza, the desert route.” 27 So he got up and set out. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, * that is, the queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury, who had come to Jerusalem to worship, 28 and was returning home. Seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. 29 The Spirit said to Philip, “Go and join up with that chariot.” 30 * Philip ran up and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and said, “Do you understand what you are reading?” 31 He replied, “How can I, unless someone instructs me?” So, he invited Philip to get in and sit with him. 32 This was the scripture passage he was reading: “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opened not his mouth. 33 In (his) humiliation justice was denied him. Who will tell of his posterity? For his life is taken from the earth.” 34 Then the eunuch said to Philip in reply, “I beg you, about whom is the prophet saying this? About himself, or about someone else?” 35 Then Philip opened his mouth and, beginning with this scripture passage, he proclaimed Jesus to him. 36 As they traveled along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “Look, there is water. What is to prevent my being baptized?” 37 38 Then he ordered the chariot to stop, and Philip and the eunuch both went down into the water, and he baptized him. 39 When they came out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, but continued on his way rejoicing.
[xv] Cardinal Désiré-Félicien-François-Joseph Mercier (1851-1926) was a Belgian prelate of the Roman Catholic Church,
| [xvi] Prayer: Cardinal Mercier’s Prayer to the Holy Spirit “I am going to reveal to you the secret of sanctity and happiness. Everyday for five minutes control your imagination and close your ears to all the noises of the world, in order to speak to that Divine Spirit, saying to Him:” |
O, Holy Spirit, beloved of my soul, I adore you.
Enlighten me, guide me, strengthen me, console me.
Tell me what I should do. Give me your orders.
I promise to submit myself to all that you desire of me
and to accept all that you permit to happen to me.
Let me only know your will
“If you do this your life will flow along happily and serenely and full of consolation, even in the midst of trials. Grace will be proportioned to the trial, and you will arrive at the gate of merit. This submission to the Holy Spirit is the secret of sanctity.” — Cardinal Mercier
