WE can’t put the Holy Spirit in a box. Like the wind, he blows wherever he wishes. He uses people he wants to use, even those that we would never imagine.
The conversion and the missionary life of St Paul are some of the amazing stories of the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul, as we know, was Saul of Tarsus before his conversion that persecuted Christians during the apostolic age.
In the Acts of the Apostles, Saul was traveling on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus on a mission to arrest the apostles and bring them back to Jerusalem when the ascended Jesus appeared to him in a great bright light. He was struck blind, but after three days, Ananias of Damascus restored his sight. After that, filled with the Holy Spirit, he began to preach that Jesus of Nazareth was the Jewish messiah and the Son of God.
Although Paul did not belong to the original Twelve Apostles, he earned the honor of one of the greatest apostles because of his zealous and fearless missionary works to the Gentiles. He accomplished these works through the power of the Holy Spirit.
On this Solemnity of Pentecost, we must claim the Holy Spirit’s continuous power in our lives and the Church. The Holy Spirit is real. He breathes on us to inspire and encourage us, heal us, and use us to bring goodness to others and the world.
And so, we must pray to the Holy Spirit, especially during these challenging times of the Church and the world. We must ask him for wisdom, strength, and zeal to keep living and proclaiming our faith in a world that does not recognize Jesus as God and live by his Words.
Fr. George M. Smiga, STD, explores the unrestricted power of the Holy Spirit in his written works on Scriptures. In Give us This Day, he writes:
“As baptized Christians, we believe we possess the Holy Spirit. But the Spirit will never be restricted to who we are today. For years we may have faithfully participated in Mass and the sacraments. The Spirit is certainly with us. But the Spirit may also one day instill in us a deep thirst for holiness, which goes beyond the routine practices of our faith, and then we begin to take more time for personal prayer and spiritual readings. Perhaps we already have a rich spiritual life. This life is, of course, grounded in the Spirit. But the Spirit is also able to make us aware of the profound need for justice in our world, and then we find ourselves becoming active in efforts to eliminate poverty, racism, and the abuse of our environment.”
May we all invoke the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives! May the Spirit restore our faith and reshape our hearts and minds to be instruments of unity, peace, and justice in the world! Amen.
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The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the Asian Journal, its management, editorial board and staff.
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Fr. Rodel “Odey” Balagtas is the pastor of Incarnation Church in Glendale, California.
