Sunday, May 31st, 2020

“You take back your spirit, they die, returning to the dust from which they came.” Without the Holy Spirit we are nothing. We are not. Your wife only stands beside you, your husband is only present, your children are alive, every single person we know - are only there because each is a gift of the Spirit.

The work of creation may have ceased, but there is no time we can ever truly act, truly ever be, without the help of the Holy Spirit. We would simply and immediately collapse into nothing. This is all important because it helps us see the truth: it is madness to try to live without the Holy Spirit. For it is emptiness: and it is to cease to exist.

But this also means something else: if without the Holy Spirit we are nothing, the gift of him there, in nothingness, is something almost beyond life. We have used the word ‘life’ so often in the English language, and in spiritual circumstances especially, that the word loses its fever. Contemplating reality with the psalms gives us leave to sense the gripping gravity of reality:- without the Holy Spirit there is, at best, plain empty darkness; but with him - look at this cosmos stretching with colours and planets and galaxies and forms and the overwhelming breadth of wonderful living things. And this with just one whiff, with one gentle breeze of the Holy Spirit. All we have is just the titlepage of the endlessly new book of his eternal works. This is what the psalm is saying when it says: “You send for your spirit, and they are recreated; and you renew the face of the earth.”

This is what a Christian participates in when they consent to Christ’s takeover of their life - so transformed that they themselves rise and lift and are liberated and discover themselves free co-creators, shepherds of being. This my friends, is why our Christianity is so joyful, and why we proclaim it to all the imprisoned, all the struggling and all the poor. The Holy Spirit offers us life.

So how can we open ourselves to the Holy Spirit?

Be catechised, baptised, confirmed and receive First Holy Communion: you become then a living member of the Church through whom the Holy Spirit flows.

Have a long silent time of prayer every day: in the silence, we give the Holy Spirit place to work, and we are better able to identify his shifts and subtleties.

Pray to Him! When you wake in the morning, beg him to shape your day. Before difficult decisions or meetings or activities - ask him to guide you. He really does, he helps and salves and soothes the way of the Gospel.

Go to confession at least once a month: this way, we remove the obstacles of sin and evil we have placed in front of him.

Give yourself daily to the Virgin Mary: she is the easy way and spouse to the Holy Spirit, immaculate by the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Ask for his gifts, and use them: you will find you can do things and build the Church in a way others are not able to.