Don’t hold it against me, but I have a brother who is a lawyer.
He hasn’t actually practiced law in a number of years, but when he was practicing he once accompanied a dear friend of the family to court over an issue with the friend’s church. It seems the church wanted to convert some of its land into a parking lot, but at the time the zoning for that particular area didn’t allow for it.
So my brother’s plea to the judge was that, though the “letter” of the law forbade a parking lot, the “spirit” of the law would surely accommodate these good people. The judge agreed and our friend’s church, a Pentecostal congregation, got permission to build their parking lot. On the way to the car our friend, one of the most Christ-like people we have ever known, said, “Bobby, I was worried at first but when you brought the Spirit into it…well, I knew we were going to be OK!”
Spirit comes from the root word for breath, the most organically human thing we have. The Easter season is over now. We have witnessed Pentecost and we have celebrated the gift of communication visited upon Mary and the disciples in the form of fire, a fire that gave them breath and words and essential human connections to others – the fire of the Holy Spirit.
So what is in store for us in the liturgical calendar after Easter? Perhaps it is a call more than ever to live in the Spirit. What on earth (or in heaven) does that mean? How do we do what my brother did in that courtroom? How do we bring the Spirit into it?
If I’m going to Scripture, I usually head first to the Psalms because I know how human and lyrical the cries there always are. “A clean heart create for me, God; renew within me a steadfast spirit. Do not drive me from before your face, nor take from me your Holy Spirit.” (Psalm 51:12-13) Or “Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. May your kind Spirit guide me on ground that is level.” (Psalm 143:10)
What does a steadfast spirit look like? How do we know God’s kind Spirit is guiding us?
For Catholics, one way we live in the Spirit is by receiving it through the sacraments. If we are marrying, we marry our spouse in the Spirit; if we bring a child into the world, our baby is baptized in the Spirit; we take our sinful and sorrowful souls to the confessional for reconciliation and spiritual healing; in our sickness we are anointed; and in our hunger for Christ we consume Him, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Eucharist.
The Holy Spirit that enlivens us is the love flowing from Father to Son and Son to Father. It is the very “breath” of love.
What happens when our lives, our marriages, our raising of children, our prayer, our work, our grief, our hands outstretched to others, our joy and our love all become sacramental?
When I think about how the Holy Spirit guides us, I recall the words of Scott J. Bloch in his introduction to a book on the great Catholic historian and essayist, Hilaire Belloc. His description of Belloc could be a description of the Holy Spirit’s dwelling in us when he talks about Belloc being “a carrier of the ancient music, … a truth so penetrating that it fuels the soul, intellect, and emotions; he draws us into a contemplation of the world around us” and in another place where he says of Belloc, he “calls us to laugh and to pray, to walk and to observe: to sit in contemplation, to feel sad at the passing of things and to realize the transcendence in all of it.”
Indeed, we laugh and pray and walk and observe in the Spirit – and it shows to those around us. And though we don’t hide the sadness of what has passed, especially our loved ones, still we come to understand what the philosopher Gabriel Marcel called our “urgent inner need for transcendence.” Our marriage is more than a contract, our children are gifts from above, our suffering is redemptive, and our charity so much more than mere benevolence. Our joy points to God, and our love is in imitation of Christ’s complete self-donation to us.
This is what living in the Spirit looks like. This is the delectable aftertaste of Pentecost. And the language of a sacramental life, of the breath and the fire of love can be understood by anyone with a heart. It is understood perhaps most perfectly by children. It is understood implicitly by the homeless; the suffering certainly know it when they see it; the sick and the poor surely sense its presence.
And, like our friend said, when the Spirit enters into things… well, we’re going to be OK.
Fred Gallagher is an author and editor-in-chief with Gastonia-based Good Will Publishers Inc.