Let the power flow: The Holy Spirit and prayer
Homily for a daily Mass the week before Pentecost
Note: This homily was preached at the high school where I teach theology.
At Christmastime in our house, stringing the lights on the Christmas tree is my job. Mrs. Greydanus is in charge of ornamenting the tree after the lights are on, and our kids help us both, but the lights are my job—and over the years I feel I’ve perfected my technique!
I wasn’t always as good at it as I am now. I remember one time many years ago my sister-in-law asked me to string the lights on her tree. She had a two-story great room, and she had this immense tree, something like 15 feet high. At first I couldn’t figure out how to attack it. I started, like always, from the top down, which in this case meant using a ladder, but I had to move the ladder half a dozen times just to go around the top of the tree once. It was ridiculous!
Then I got what I thought was a brilliant idea: What if, instead of moving the ladder, I had someone lying on the ground turning the tree? It worked beautifully at first—but after a few turns we realized that the movement was starting to destabilize the tree in the base. It wasn’t meant to move that way! Then I got a better idea: Back in my construction days I had learned to walk in drywall stilts. So I borrowed a pair of stilts from the company I used to work for—and problem solved!
There was still one catch: In those early days I hadn’t yet figured out the secret of stringing the lights hot, which is to say, lit. So each new string I added went up dark, and after the string was hung, I would plug in an extension cord, make sure it was all good, unplug it, and start on the next string. In those days one bad bulb could stop the power flowing to the whole tree, so plugging in the extension cord, you held your breath: Would it light up? Would the power flow? No matter how hard you worked stringing the lights or how good a job you did, if the power didn’t flow, it was all for nothing.
These days, I string the lights hot, so you can see the power flowing as you string the lights. It’s a much better way of working. I think about that in connection with where we are as Catholics in the liturgical year right now. Christmas, of course, is long behind us, along with Advent. We’ve made our way through Lent, Holy Week and the Easter Triduum, and, most recently, just days ago, the Ascension of the Lord. Christ has been born. He grew up. He was baptized by John in the Jordan River. He preached, performed miracles, healed the sick, fed the hungry, cast out demons. In Jerusalem, hours before his arrest, he held the Last Supper, giving us the Eucharist and the priesthood. He was crucified. He rose to immortal life. He ascended into heaven, and…here we are, in this brief in-between time after Jesus has ascended into heaven, but before this coming Sunday, the great Solemnity of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus’ disciples, manifesting as rushing wind and tongues of fire. (The red vestments of Pentecost are for the fire of the Holy Spirit.)
How important is Pentecost? Let me put it this way: Jesus came to accomplish the work of our salvation—but without Pentecost, without the Holy Spirit, the power doesn’t flow. Without the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection are just Bible stories with no vital connection to our lives. Less than that: Without the Holy Spirit, there’s no Bible, no Church, no sacraments, no Christian faith. Without the Holy Spirit, your baptism was just a splash of water, and what we receive from this altar is just wafers and wine. Without the power of the Holy Spirit flowing in our hearts and our lives, our best efforts to please God, to lead good lives, to be good people, are like someone trying to reach heaven by wearing a pair of stilts.
This is what we celebrate this coming Sunday on Pentecost. Our hope as Christians is not just that God created us and loves us; not just that the Father sent his Son Jesus into the world to show us God’s love by his crucifixion and resurrection; not just that we can read about all this in God’s Word; but that God’s power acts in the world today. In the Church; in us, as members of the Church; and, ultimately, anywhere he wants to. “The Spirit blows where he wills,” Jesus said.
How do we experience the power of the Holy Spirit? How do we benefit from it? How does the power flow in our lives?
Do you want to know? Do you really want to know? Do you want the Holy Spirit at work in your life? Because I have good news for you—but only if you really want it. Because if you want it, that very fact is already evidence of the Holy Spirit at work in your heart. Whatever desire we have for God is already God’s work in us. Jesus tells us in Luke’s Gospel that our Father in heaven will give us the Holy Spirit if we ask, if we seek, if we knock. Ask, seek, knock, Jesus says. He’s talking about prayer. Prayer is essential if we want God’s power flowing in our lives. Ah, but without the Holy Spirit, our best prayer is just us talking to ourselves.
Real prayer only happens when the real you becomes aware of the real God. Not your ideas about God or your ideas about yourself, but the real you in the presence of the real God. We need the Holy Spirit for that. Whatever door we’re knocking on is probably the wrong door until we figure out that our whole relationship with God begins, not with us knocking on God’s door, but with God knocking on ours. Saint Ambrose of Milan wrote:
Christ stands at the door of your soul. Hear him speaking: “Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to them and eat with them, and they with me.”
Ambrose is quoting there from the book of Revelation. Prayer is essential if we want God’s power flowing in our lives, but we need to learn that prayer is not our gift to God, it’s God’s gift to us.
If we ever have a feeling like, “Oh, I should pray … I should pray more … I should pray today … I should pray now” … perhaps accompanied by a level of reluctance or guilt, the reluctance and guilt comes from us, but the thought “I should pray”—that’s God knocking at the door. So never let that reluctance or guilt deter you! If God invites us to turn to him in prayer, who are we to think “I’m not worthy” or “This place is a mess” or “I’ll be in a better state of mind later on”? Let God worry about those things. Open the door. The real God is already aware of the real you. Let the real you become aware of him. And the power will flow.
Come, Holy Spirit. Amen.