What can the Spirit of God accomplish in us?
In the Old Testament, the people of God are bound to God in covenant through the spirit of God that comes upon them; to break covenant is a sign of self-focus, an indication of a failure to give room to the spirit of God working within them. We see this failure to recognize a need for God’s spirit at work in the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis, when the people look to the work of their own hands as sufficient to greatness; in Exodus, on the other hand, the people are bound to God and God to God’s people through the work of God’s spirit in covenant, visible to them in the form of peals of thunder and lightening, a heavy cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast . The dry bones of Ezekiel are another example of a people dead to God through sin, but when God breathes spirit into them, they are lifted to new life. God’s ability to transform us through God’s spirit is evident in Joel as well, when God says, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and all people with thereby coming to unity in God. Lord, send out your spirit, and renew the face of the earth, we sing in Psalm 104 – this is God’s action in our lives, time and time again, from the beginning of time.
Jesus is clear to his disciples on this point: Rivers of living water will flow from within him who believes in me, he tells the crowd at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles in John’s Gospel. He is speaking in reference to the Spirit that we will receive once he has died and risen, a Spirit that will flow through us and from us to other. That Spirit is the breath Jesus breathes upon the apostles in the upper room in John as well: Receive the Holy Spirit, he tells them, receive, that is, the ability to do what I am sending you to do, to open yourselves to the Spirit in your life so you can understand those who need to be forgiven and forgive them. It is the same Spirit that comes like a strong driving wind upon the disciples at the time for Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles – the tongues as of fire that come to rest upon them offer them enlightenment, a light they did not have previously, a kind of interior vision. Henceforth, as Paul tells the Corinthians, all of our different gifts are given to us by the same Spirit, even our ability to proclaim Jesus as Lord. It is the Spirit that makes it possible to come together in one Body, coming to the aid of our weakness as Paul notes in the Letter to the Romans, drawing us closer, ever closer to God, our faithful guide to perfect Love.
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
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