IntroductionIn the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth through his Word. And the Holy Spirit rested upon the waters [Genesis 1:1-2]. The Father with His Omnipotent Power, The Son with mighty Word and Wisdom and the Holy Spirit with His Love was present in the origin of Creation. God is only One, but He has revealed Himself very distinctly as three persons, so that we mere creatures can come to a better understanding of Him, however we are unworthy to know God completely and He remains the greatest mystery of our faith. No one will ever receive the Wisdom to describe the Holy Trinity perfectly, so we must believe in the Word of God and in the teachings of the Church founded on Peter by Our Lord Jesus Christ. God the Father, the uncreated Spirit and Father of all Spirits dwells in His abode of Glory in the highest heavens, surrounded by Majesty and Power. God the Son, the Word of God became a man, He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and was born of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He came to the world to be our Saviour and Lord. God the Holy Spirit abides in God's creation sustaining it by the Power of Love. We are temples of the Holy Spirit, in baptism we receive the Holy Spirit with His sanctifying Grace and are born from above. We become members of the body of Christ. But we are called to live a life by the Spirit and not by the flesh, so our path to holiness is traced by the Holy Spirit and we can only grow spiritually depending on how much we surrender to His guidance and inspiration. Unless we allow God to build our spiritual temple, we are wasting our time [Psalm 127:1], because all good that we do comes from God and is His work, our pride is our great problem because we neglect the help of the spirit, we work for ourselves instead of working for God, we expect credit for what we are doing and indeed we get paid only here then. We must try to become instruments of the Holy Spirit, not His obstacles. When we become familiar with the Holy Spirit, we allow God to take possession of us, we let the King take command of our lives and we become one with Him. To be able to experience the healing power of the Holy Spirit, we must repent, we must yield to the power of God, accepting His Will and following His commandments. This work aims to make us more familiar with the Holy Spirit by study of the Holy Scriptures and by the personal experience of those who are consecrated to Him. Who is the Holy SpiritThe Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, it is God, it is His powerful action that permeates creation with Love and Life. It is existence itself. We know Him also as the third person of the Holy Trinity. As we look at the attributes of God, who is One, we may say that God the Father is the Absolute Power and Will, God the Son is His Word and command, God the Holy Spirit is the action of God which is Love. The Holy Spirit is a fire of Divine Love that comes to touch us and refine us in an ardent desire to possess God. It gives us a passion for God, it destroys all the earthly affections because it opens our spiritual eyes to see how precious God is. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God the Father and of God the Son, so it moves us to cry Abba which means "daddy" and as children of God we come to trust God more than we have trusted before, it also moves us to accept Christ in our lives as our model, way, truth and life. The fire of the Holy Spirit enkindles the little flame of Love that is in every heart, it raises the soul to soar in the freedom of God, it feeds the soul with food from Heaven, it gives courage to overcome all human weaknesses, it grants complete trust in God so that we can say with St. Paul, it is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me. The Holy Spirit is not visible to our eyes, but we can feel His Presence within us, He grants Peace, Love and Joy to our hearts and by His action we learn to recognise Him. No one can say that Jesus is Lord unless He is moved by the Holy Spirit [1 Corinthians 12:3]. So this Spirit abides in every one who acknowledges that Jesus is Lord, but this doesn't guarantee that that person is holy, it merely activates his faith by that conviction, so we still need a continuous guidance of the Holy Spirit to attain holiness. We must be born of the Spirit to become spirit, and we must let Him come like a gentle breeze and bend our wills to His holy inspirations [John 3:8]. What is born of the flesh is flesh, but what is born of the Spirit is Spirit [John 3:6], so in baptism we are born of the Spirit and we are challenged to prove that we are Spirit. As temples of the Holy Spirit [1 Corinthians 3:16] we must behave with the due reverence to God Who abides in us, so that we can become like Him. But the problem is that through sin we become temples of the evil spirit and we despise God. In order to experience the Love of the Holy Spirit and to become children of God, we must not sin [1 John 3:9] The Holy Spirit will teach us what we need to say, He reveals the Wisdom of God, because He reveals the teachings of the Word of God into our hearts, He is also described as the Consoler and Advocate or The Paraclete [John 14:26] No one can become holy on his own so he needs the influence of the Holy Spirit, He is like a gentle dove that gets scared at the least movement of sin. So we must be very gentle in the Presence of God who has vouchsafed to come to dwell in us. We have to deny ourselves the influence of our own human spirit in order to allow the Spirit of God to take control of our lives, this is only achieved by a life of prayer and detachment. We must yield humbly to the powerful Holy Spirit in order to correspond to His Grace, we must make a decision to lead an interior life where we give up our private judgement, the light of reason in exchange for the Light of God which comes only through faith. Only through this complete annihilation of the self can we allow the Spirit of God to possess us; to think otherwise is only presumptuous, because our pride will always desire praise for our works, but God's work in our souls is the only way to make us holy. The spiritual man is also called a man of God, because he truly belongs to Him, He doesn't look for personal rewards, He doesn't resist God's Will wether that may bring him trials, temptations, contradictions or humiliations. God knows best, so the man of God yields completely to Him just like Job. Any temporal gifts are for the Praise and Glory of God not for his own, when any material or spiritual gifts are taken away from him, He will gladly accept God's will [Job 1:21]. He will live his life in imitation of Christ who always yielded to the Will His Heavenly Father [Luke 22:42]. Promises of the Holy SpiritOld Testament and New Testament God saw our need to have His Holy Spirit, otherwise we would be doomed. For this reason He made a promise in the Old Testament which was fulfilled with the coming of Christ, He spoke through different prophets as follows: Old TestamentThe Holy Spirit will rest upon the Son of David
23 And I will sanctify my great name , which was profaned among the Gentiles, which you have profaned in the midst of them: that the Gentiles may know that I am the Lord, saith the Lord of hosts, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes. 24 For I will take you from among the Gentiles, and will gather you together out of all the countries, and will bring you into your own land. 25 And I will pour upon you clean water, and you shall be cleansed from all your filthiness, and I will cleanse you from all your idols. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and will give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my spirit in the midst of you: and I will cause you to walk in my commandments, and to keep my judgments, and do them. 28 And you shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. Let us examine this passage: Jesus came to reveal in Himself the splendour of the Father, the image of the invisible God and the power of His Holy Name [Philippians 2:10-11]. So that we should bend our knee at the mention of the holy name of Jesus, because it is only through the power of His name that we can be saved. [Acts 4:12] Jesus also taught us to pray to our Father in Heaven saying "Holy be your name" [Matthew 6:9] I will take you from among the Gentiles The gentiles were considered pagans or people without God, whereas the Israelites were the chosen people of God. Salvation is offered to every one who accepts Christ as their Saviour and Lord, the Holy Spirit is for all. [Romans 16:25-27]. I will pour upon you clean water John the Baptist came baptising with water but Christ baptises with Living Water and with the Fire of the Holy Spirit [Matthew 3:11]. In the waters of baptism we come to meet Christ, we are immersed in the cleansing living water of the Holy Spirit, water that gushed forth from the heart of Christ. We receive the fire of the Holy Spirit, which is a spark of the divinity, the sanctifying grace that will lead us to Salvation [John 3:5]. I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you Jesus died for our sins by giving his life in exchange for ours, He extended this gift making it a perpetual sacrifice "Take this and eat it, this is my body, take this and drink this is my blood" [Matthew 26:26-28], in a way God has given us the heart of Jesus as food for our souls in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. The pierced heart of Jesus is also his personal gift to everyone, as we let our hearts be pierced with remorse for our sins we receive a new heart, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we will have a heart that is not longer ours but the heart of God. This of course is incomprehensible doctrine for the learned and the wise, this is only meant for the little children since those are the ones who can possess the Kingdom of Heaven [Matthew 11:25-26]. What is the good of a heart if it doesn't give life? But with the heart of Jesus comes also His Precious Blood that gives us life for eternity. He has also given us His Holy Spirit which He sent from Heaven the day of Pentecost. The Spirit of God the Father and the Son is the new Spirit for us, which replaces the old human spirit of sinfulness and self love. I will put my spirit in the midst of you After the Resurrection of Our Lord, He appeared to his disciples bringing with Him the Peace of our reconciliation with God the Father. He then breathed on the apostles in order to give them new life and He said : "Receive the Holy Spirit" [John 20:22]. So He put His Holy Spirit in them, even though they only experienced the power of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, days after the Lord had ascended into Heaven. The Holy Spirit descended in the shape of tongues of fire which were seen over the heads of the apostles. This was a baptism of fire with the Holy Spirit, we should also feel a similar experience when we receive the Sacrament of Confirmation. In baptism we receive the Holy Spirit and we are cleansed with the waters of Salvation, the spark of Divine Love within us keeps burning with desire for the Holy Spirit of God to completely possess us but it is up to us to fan that flame of Love within, to stir up the Grace of God for our own spiritual growth [ 2 Timothy 1:6]. It is the Lord who personally puts His Holy Spirit within us, since we are His temples, we must live our lives in humility before His Presence [1 Corinthians 3:16-17]. Through our devotions we supply fuel for the fire of our Faith and the Holy Spirit responds to us by filling us with yearning for God. You shall be my people, and I will be your God. We are the people of God, a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation (1 Peter 2:9) ; we belong to Christ and we must proclaim that He has saved us. In the past we were not God's people, but now, "we are the people of God". In the past we did not receive His Mercy , but now we have received God's Mercy through Jesus Christ Our Lord. In the mystical body of Christ He is the head and we are the body [1 Peter 2:9-10]. God has called us his people, furthermore in Christ we have become his adoptive sons and daughters, therefore we have become the children of God [Ephesians 1:5]. The Holy Spirit shall rest upon Jesus Son of David.David son of Jesse . Jesse Son of Abraham [Genealogy of Christ Matthew 1:1-17]. In the book of the prophet Isaiah we learn that Christ will be a descendant of Jesse, the son of David and that the Holy Spirit will rest upon Him [Isaiah 11:1-2] with his seven gifts:wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. He will be the Saviour, He will give us living water to drink and with joy we will draw that water from the well of Salvation [Isaiah 12:3] . That will be the sanctifying water of baptism to deliver us from original sin, and it will be also the Living water of the Holy Spirit which will be given to us after the death of Our Lord [John 16:7]. The Lord tells us through the prophet Joel [Joel 2:28] : And it shall come to pass after this, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy: your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. The Holy Spirit in the New TestamentThe Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary and She conceived by His Power Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ [Luke 1:35]. While She was visiting her cousin Elizabeth, at hearing the voice of Mary St. John the Baptist was sanctified by the Holy Spirit in the womb of her mother and leaped for joy. Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and said who am I that the Mother of my Lord should visit me, among all women you are blessed and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Mary answered by praising God in the beautiful song of the Magnificat [Luke 1:39-56]. Before Jesus started his public ministry, He went to the Jordan river where He was baptised by John the Baptist. Then The Holy Spirit descended upon Him and was visible to John in a form of a dove. He then went to fast in the desert for forty days, where he overcame the temptations of the devil. Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit as promised in the book of [Isaiah 11:1-2] and began His ministry calling everyone to repentance, preaching the Good News about the Kingdom of Heaven, healing the sick, and casting out devils. John the Baptist said to everyone I baptise you with water for repentance of your sins but Jesus will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire [Matthew 3:11] . Jesus taught that all sins shall be forgiven except sins committed against the Holy Spirit [Luke 12:10]. He also taught that we only have to ask and it shall be given, knock and the door will be answered, search and we shall find, and that if a father here on earth, even though being wicked knows how to respond to the need of his children, how much more will our Heavenly Father give us the Holy Spirit if we ask !, so the Holy Spirit is the gift of the Father and the Son that sanctifies us and we must ask for it. It is the most precious thing that we can ask for and our good Heavenly Father will grant us our petition if we ask, knock and search for it. We are temples of the Holy Spirit and to be filled with the Spirit of God we must cleanse our temples with the waters of repentance through baptism. However we are supposed to stop sinning in order to receive the fire of the Holy Spirit. So this promise of God is conditional to our repentance. A humble and contrite heart is the place where God wants to dwell [Isaiah 66:2] . God the Father and God the Son will come to dwell in Spirit in those who love Jesus and keep His Word [John 14:23] Jesus promised that whenever we are put on trial for proclaiming the Good News we will speak what is given to us by the Holy Spirit [Mark 13:10-11].
The Work of God |
