The Eve of Pentecost

 

Let us prepare for the coming of the Spirit. Pentecost, the most powerful fulfillment of God’s promise, which comes 50 days after Easter.

The Holy Spirit is Power indeed: pure love in action, unstoppable and awesome to experience and know. He is the all powerful, uncontrollable messenger, promised to us by Jesus before his death and resurrection. When you ask the Holy Spirit to come upon you and you accept the Holy Spirit into your life, your life and your prayer can never really be the same again. For you can feel the power of every syllable uttered, a vast spiritual energy that is beyond description and can only truly be felt and known through accepting the Holy Spirit to live with you and in you, transfiguring all, as the power flows through you.

The Spirit brings amazing gifts, to aid you, and transforms you, in the same way as the disciples in the Upper room were transformed, who were cowering in fear before the Spirit descended upon them, then miraculously they were transfigured and full of confidence and filled with God’s gifts and utterly emboldened and changed.

When the Spirit is upon you, you feel the sheer power and joy of being. Your prayer takes on new energy. You speak with the confidence of God within you.

He acts through you. It is incredible. You know your prayer is heard and answered. You can feel the power of love within you and flowing through you and especially so at Pentecost, that oh so very special day, when the Spirit was heard and seen anointing the disciples and they were blessed with the gift of tongues and the freedom and inspiration that the Spirit brings so perfectly.

The Holy Spirit brings us both gifts to use and enables us to bear fruit, fruit that will last: love that can be felt, peace that will flow, forbearance that will calm you, kindness that will bless yourself and others, goodness that will emanate from you, faithfulness that will strengthen you, gentleness that is felt and self- control that empowers you; all these fruits can be seen, felt, experienced, recognised and come to aid us profoundly in our spiritual life.

Much can be said of each of these amazing fruits. But most important is that their presence in a person and in their actions can be seen, felt and even tasted, as St Ignatius taught us. They cannot be falsified in anyway. Only the truth of these fruits will be felt in the heart, when the person acts with integrity and truly flows with God.