As we approach Pentecost and the conclusion of the Easter season, we rejoice in the sending of the Holy Spirit upon the Church and upon us.
The Third Person of the Blessed Trinity anoints us with the very power and grace of God.
God loves us
In the Gospel for the Sixth Sunday of Easter this year, we heard this passage: “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I am in you. Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father and I will love him and reveal myself to him…and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” (John 14: 20-21, 23).
These promises made by Jesus at the Last Supper are the fulfillment of His entire mission and the crux of the entire Gospel.
The Triune God, whom the universe cannot contain, loves us so profoundly in Christ, that He desires to dwell within our souls through the sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit.
If we love the Lord and keep His commandments, we become the sacred place where He comes to take up residence.
This spiritual reality is so significant, profound, and overwhelming that most of us probably struggle to believe it.
How can God love me that much? How can I, with all my sins and failures, be the dwelling place for Almighty God? Can God be that close?
When we consistently live in this radical awareness of God’s indwelling, how different our lives become.
We are more sensitive to the presence of the Divine, both in ourselves and in those around us.
Sin has less of a hold on us because Jesus is right in front of our eyes.
I rely less on affirmation and love from others because the ground of my joy and peace is the divine light within.
I can bear the sorrows and crosses of this life with greater equanimity because I know myself as a son of the Father on my pilgrim way to Heaven.
This passage from John helps us understand the mystery of Christ’s prayer life better.
Since the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father, Jesus spent those long nights of prayer simply resting in the grace of that divine indwelling.
He needed this spiritual repose more than He needed physical sleep, for He found refreshment in the heart of the Father. This great truth forms our prayer life.
As we move deeper into the love of Christ, our prayer becomes less about our needs and more about God’s will, less about words and more about silence, less about what we are doing, and more about how God is acting in the quiet reality of His mysterious indwelling.
The power of the Holy Spirit
As we celebrate Pentecost and the birth of the Church, we witness the explosive power of the Holy Spirit, anointing the Apostles, sending them on the evangelizing mission of proclaiming the Gospel to every creature, and making disciples.
This outward impulse of the Church to go to the world, however, is only sustainable by the interior pull of the Holy Spirit to dwell with the Lord in prayer and the sacraments, as He makes His abode within our hearts and lives.
Christ spent Himself during the day, preaching, healing, and teaching, because He rested in the Father’s heart every evening.
This Gospel calls us to embrace a distinctive and deliberate life.
In our incessant world of action, God calls us to sit still.
Tempted to measure our worth by external factors, we instead find the love of the Lord to be enough for us.
While we naturally run from pain and sorrow, we believers find meaning, peace, and even joy in it.
In a culture that often disrespects human dignity, we lift up the glory of every person, made in the image and likeness of God.
Let your interior life increasingly become a resting in the heart of the Father, with the consolation that the mysterious, almighty, transcendent God has chosen your heart and soul, your very being, as His place to dwell.