Jesus has sent His Holy Spirit into the Church and He yearns that this Lord and Giver of Life fill our hearts. Beg the Holy Spirit to come and He will. The Holy Spirit burns in the center of the Church with unquenchable love, and when this Love is in the center of hearts who welcome Him, He makes all things new.
Sometimes He is difficult to welcome because of our pride and laziness. We do not want to change but He comes to convince us of sin and of the righteousness of God. If however we do not humble ourselves and rouse ourselves to show the Spirit of Truth hospitality, we are lost. To show the Breath of God hospitality, we must choose to live and we must decide to let go of every rash judgment about ourselves, others and God.
To beg the Holy Spirit to come means weeping over sin. To welcome Him means contrition. To receive Him means humble recognition of faults and a readiness to descend from our own vantage point and be raised by the Spirit to see life circumstance from God's perspective. This means the willingness to put one's life on the line that there might be justice in our communities, that the weak and vulnerable be protected and cared for. This means readiness to forgive and to seek forgiveness. This means compassion for those who hurt us and learning to plead for them before God. This means a resolution to do whatever it takes to restore the dignity of my neighbor, especially when I am the one who has caused his misery. This means being vulnerable enough as to allow my heart to be pierced over the plight of the stranger whom the Lord has sent to me.
Welcoming the Holy Spirit means openness to the inconvenient, the uncomfortable and the unfamiliar, for unless we allow Him to root our love in this, we have not yet learned to love in a manner worthy of a follower of Christ. Christ has sent Him to us so that we might finally learn to love as He has loved us. Such love begins with welcome, with receiving the Gift, with showing hospitality to the Divine Guest.
To welcome the Holy Spirit, we must be open to being astonished. When the Creator Spirit comes, the power of our imagination is freed from narrow fantasies. When the Advocate enters, the eye of our intelligence is opened to horizons far beyond personal failure and death. Where this Wind blows, barriers of frustration and disappointment are cleared away. Before the Deluge of God, levies of hubris and cowardliness are flooded over and washed away. All small-mindedness and pettiness are shattered in this Light. When the Sanctifier moves within, wonder seizes the soul and we are baptized in a joy that confounds the world. When the Soul of our Soul stirs in the substance of our being, the whole cosmos is filled with New Life through us.
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