Pentecost - Living by the SpiritBy Donagh O'Shea OP
The Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church. The feast of Pentecost is an annual invitation to the Church to look into itself and discover its soul. It is tempted, like all of us, to keep looking the other way. In a famous phrase, it is tempted 'to lose its soul to save its face.' In one sense it's more natural to forget about one's inner life and to get on with living. If you are always worrying about your heart or your liver, etc., you will not take risks or do a lot of work. A healthy person just goes to it. The Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church, and there is a sense in which that Spirit likes to work unseen, undeclared.. Adapting Jesus's words (Matthew 7:21), 'It is not those who say 'Holy Spirit!' who will enter the kingdom of heaven. It is those who live by the Spirit.' During the 2nd Vatican Council an Eastern bishop complained that there was little mention of the Holy Spirit in the documents. The next document was full of it! But something tells us that talking about the Spirit is not the same thing as living by the Spirit.
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'Without the Holy Spirit,' wrote Ignatius of Laodicea, 'God is distant, Christ is merely an historical figure, the Gospel is a dead letter, the Church is just an organisation, authority is domination, mission is propaganda, liturgy is only nostalgia, and the work of Christians is slave labour. But with the Holy Spirit, Christ is risen and present, the Gospel is a living force, the Church is a communion in the life of the Trinity, authority is a service that sets people free, mission is Pentecost, the liturgy is memory and anticipation, and the labour of Christians is divinised.'
