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PAGE 5—February 3,1977
The Spirit Of God At Work
From The Beginning Of Time
BY FATHER JOHN J. CASTELOT
The Fourth Gospel is famous for its
symbolism, one aspect of which is frequent use
of double meanings. An interesting example is
the description of Jesus’ death: “Then he
bowed his head, and delivered over his spirit”
(Jn. 19,30). A common expression for dying is
“to give up the ghost (spirit),” and the other
three Gospels use a Greek equivalent of this
phrase. But John adapts this to signify
simultaneously Jesus’ dying and his handing
over or gift of the Spirit. This is the “hour” of
Jesus, a dark hour, yes, but one already
suffused, from the Johannine point of view, by
the light of glory. It is the climactic hour of
salvation history.
The spirit of God had been at work from the
beginning of time, a creative, powerful,
life-giving spirit. What did this concept mean
throughout the Old Testament period? What
did it mean to Jesus’ contemporaries prior to
the starting revelation of the Holy Spirit as a
divine Person? The word for spirit in Hebrew
(ruah), Greek (pneuma), and Latin (spiritus)
meant basically wind or breath. This explains
why the New American Bible translates, in Gn.
1, 2, “a mighty wind swept over the waters,”
“mighty wind” is literally “a spirit (ruah) of
God.” The translation is quite correct. It is easy
to see how the idea of wind could suggest that
of power and the concept of breath that of life.
Thus the Yahwist story of creation expresses
the emergence of human life by saying that
God “blew into his nostrils the breath of life,
and so man became a living being” (Gn. 2, 7).
In this connection, read again Ezekiel’s ‘Dry
Bones’ vision of the re-creation of the people
(Ez. 37, 1-14).
‘The spirit of God’ - a symbol of divine
force, creative, life-giving power. Over and over
we read of His sending His spirit upon chosen
instruments to empower them to carry out His
designs in a variety of ways: to praise Him, to
speak in His behalf, to act for Him. Thus Saul’s
prophetic ecstasy is described: “As he set out
from the hilltop toward the sheds, the spirit of
God came upon him also, and he continued on
in a prophetic condition until he reached the
spot” (1 Sm. 19,23).
Isaiah envisioned the rise of an ideal king
from the line of David, one abundantly
endowed with truly noble qualities:
“But a shoot shall sprout from the stump of
Jesse/and from his roots a bud shall
blossom./The spirit of the LORD shall rest
upon him:/a spirit of wisdom and of
understanding,/A spirit of counsel and of
strength,/a spirit of knowledge and of fear of
the LORD (Is. 11, 1-2).
The idea of the spirit of God takes on a
startling new dimension in the New Testament.
The spirit of God is now the Holy Spirit; the
spirit is no longer simply something, however
wonderful, but Someone; it is no longer just a
divine force, however creative, but a divine
Person. The Holy Spirit was the gift of the
glorified Christ to His community, both as a
community and individually. The Gospel of
John tells us that on the very night of His
resurrection-glorification, He appeared to 10 of
his disciples and said, “Peace be with you. As
the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Then he
breathed on them and said: “Receive the Holy
Spirit. . . ” (Jn 20,21-22). This same Gospel had
said a great deal about the coming and the
mission of the Spirit in the preceding chapters,
especially 14-16.
Luke tells us of a solemn, charismatic
experience of the whole community which we
know as the Pentecost event. It is interesting to
note how many allusions to Genesis he weaves
into his picture of this experience. The “strong,
driving wind” (Acts 2:2) is reminiscent of the
mighty wind which swept over the waters at the
beginning of the Priestly creation story. For
Luke Pentecost is tantamount to a new
creation. Indeed, the Holy Spirit plays a central
role in his theology; the Acts of the Apostles
would be more appropriately entitled ‘The
Activity of the Holy Spirit.’ See the theme of
this book as enunciated in 1,8. Even in his
Gospel interpretation of the life of Jesus he
seems unable to wait for Pentecost and portrays
the Holy Spirit already at work in the souls of
people -- so much so that the Third Gospel has
been called the Gospel of the Holy Spirit.
The letters of Paul give abundant testimony
to the powerful action of the Holy Spirit in the
Churches of his day. It is particularly striking
that instead of having to prove the reality of
this activity, he can actually point to it as an
objective, observable criterion of God’s love for
us (Rom 5,5; Gal. 3,2-5). Most illustrative are
these words from Galatians: “The proof that
you are sons is the fact that God has sent forth
into our hearts the spirit of his Son which cries
out “Abba!” (“Father”) You are no longer a
slave but a son!” (Gal. 4,6-7a).
“THE MOVEMENT," Steve Landregan writes, “known as
the Charismatic renewal has been a significant factor in bringing
the Holy Spirit once again into the center of Christian spiritual
experience. For thousands of Catholics the Charismatic renewal
has meant that the Spirit has come out of the theological closet
and into their daily lives." At a Minneapolis Charismatic
renewal gathering. Catholics raise their hands in prayer. (NC
Photo by Kati Ritchie)
Spirit... Fall Arise
BY ALMA ROBERTS GIORDAN
Does the Spirit live in people today? Yes.
But sometimes we shut the Spirit off from our
lives. Yet every time the smallest good triumphs
over evil, the Spirit is manifest in contemporary
society. “The spirit of truth and the spirit of
freedom - they are the pillars of society,”
Henrik Ibsen reminds us. Whether it is in the
fields of government, communications,
education or human welfare, the Spirit moves
over the waters, the desert, the terrain of our
lives, warmly alive.
It lends strength, encouragement, hope to
our every endeavor. It is in the charismatic
movement which began as a cloudburst
perhaps, but glides and spreads as an
unstoppable landswell that must be
acknowledged. Even in this sophisticated age,
even by the Holy Father himself. For as St.
Paul tells us: “God chose those whom the
world considers absurd to shame the wise; he
singled out the weak of this world to shame the
strong” (1 Cor., 1,27). And with the spirit
hovering over, all things are possible. For the
three great attributes are contained in it: faith
hope and love.
People are many individuals. Every person
God created is touched in some way by the
Spirit. As the flower blooms when exposed to
sun and rain, so too, each one of us open to
God’s grace, through prayer and contemplation,
has the potential to bloom beautifully in the
warm light of the Spirit. Thus we may give back
to the world some of that radiance which, like
all energy, is destined for immortality.
One of the most moving stories that affected
my life’s direction was the pagan myth of
Pandora. Against the advice of
wisdom-personifled she opened the forbidden
chest entrusted to her safekeeping. Immediately
all manner of nasty insects, symbolizing every
evil known and unknown, escaped into the
world: sickness, ugliness, cruelty, hate,
jealousy, poverty, prejudice. In terror Pandora
slammed down the lid, but it was too late. Sin
in its multiple guises whirred about, stinging,
blinding, deafening her to the one small cry still
contained within that casket - the voice of
hope, a battered moth.
Cautiously she released that saving grace.
Once freed, hope grew stronger, strong enough
to prevail over all the other insects in the field.
Once again there was a fair chance for good to
be victorious over evil. When I arrived at that
point in the story my heart, which had almost
stopped, began to beat normally again. Hope
was the spirit of creation, the breath of God.
Perhaps even that “Unknown god” the Greeks
built an altar to, which St. Paul recognized in
his address to them.
The Spirit indeed came to him, as it
physically hovered over the first apostles,
gathered fearfully in that locked room after
their Master’s departure. Frederic Myers speaks
for Paul when he says: “Who so has felt the
Spirit of the Highest Cannot confound nor
doubt Him nor deny.”
In any event, I do not think it blasphemous
for me to contend that sharing of the Pandora
experience was my first personal Pentecost -
faith’s reassurance to my fearful heart. The
spirit gives life, the letter kills, “When I was a
child I understood as a child,” even as did St.
Paul. And unless we recapture that innocent
childhood faith, Scripture insists, it will be
difficult to achieve heaven. Such is the faith I
would cling to in this troublesome jet age of
religious experimentation. “Spirit of the living
God, fall afresh on me.”
ONE OF THE MOST MOVING
STORIES that affected the direction of
Alma Roberts Giordan’s life was the
pagan myth of Pandora. Against the
advise of wisdom-personified she
opened the forbidden chest entrusted
to her safekeeping and immediately all
manner of nasty insects, symbolizing
every evil known and unknown,
escaped into the world. After the
shock, Pandora discovered that the box
still contained a tiny battered moth,
symbolizing hope. Once released hope
grew stronger and once again there was
a fair chance for good to triumph over
evil. (NC Sketch by Eric Smith)
“THE IDEA OF THE SPIRIT of
God takes on a startling new dimension
in the New Testament," Father John J.
Castelot writes. “The Spirit of God is
now the Holy Spirit; the Spirit is no
longer simply something, however
wonderful, but Someone; it is no longer
just a divine force, however creative,
but a divine Person.” (NC Sketch
courtesy the J.S. Paluch Company)
The Spirit: A Gift
BY DEACON STEVE LANDREGAN
As I thumbed through the papers filled out
by senior girls the first day of the religion class
I was teaching at a diocesan high school, I came
to the question: “The Holy Spirit is!”
For students who had completed eleven
years of Catholic education, the answers were
disappointing, amusing, and far too typical.
Of the three questions pertaining to the
Trinity, the first: “God the Father is!” elicited
fairly uniform responses that showed the girls
almost all saw the Father as stern, distant,
majestic and awesome.
The second: “Jesus is!” revealed the
closeness and warmth young people feel toward
Jesus. Answers like “my friend,” “one I can go
to when there is no one else,” indicated an
intimate, prayerful relationship.
But when it came to “The Holy Spirit is!” I
literally drew a blank. The majority of the girls
gave no answer. There were a few indicating the
Holy Spirit was “what I got at confirmation.”
There was one “holy dove,” and a single “the
holy Spirit is like a white tornado.”
The message was clear. To most of these
young Catholic ladies, the Holy Spirit was a
Divine non-entitv, or as someone has said, the
forgotten person of the Holy Trinity.
The spirit has always been abundantly
present in the Church, to be sure, nevertheless
to the average Catholic, educated in Catholic
schools, awareness of the action of the Spirit in
their daily lives was sadly lacking. My students’
lack of awareness and understanding of the
action of the Holy Spirit was fairly typical.
Since that time I believe that the movement
known as the Charismatic Renewal has been a
significant factor in bringing the Holy Spirit
once again into the center of Christian spiritual
experience. For thousands of Catholics the
Charismatic Renewal has meant that the Spirit
has come out of the theological closet and into
their daily lives. For others, outside the
Charismatic movement, literature about the
renewal and polemics against it have resulted in
a new interest in and curiosity about the Spirit.
There have been and will continue to be
many Catholics whose lives are examples of
their submission and response to the Spirit, but
the Charismatic Renewal has popularized the
concept of the Spirit-filled and Spirit-controlled
Christian life.
Ten years ago the idea of a group of
Catholics gathering to pray more than the block
rosary was virtually unheard of and unthought
of. Today, prayer groups have sprung up all
over the country, in homes, churches and
schools. Many of them meet for several hours
of prayer each week.
A new vocabulary, not new to the Church
but new to the lay spiritual experience, has
come into being. It includes such terms as:
Baptism in the Holy Spirit, prayer meeting,
prophecy, healing and life in the Spirit.
A new phenomenon has come into the
Church, the covenant community, in which lay
Catholics form a community based on a
common spiritual experience, and gather into
residential and non-residential households.
A whole new set of spirit-filled songs of
praise have emerged from the various choral
and instrumental groups that are commonly
referred to as music ministries.
As a matter of fact the word ministry itself
has been given a new and wider meaning within
the Charismatic Movement where community
members work in tape ministries, youth
ministries, healing ministries, and all are
involved in serving other members in what is
referred to as the body of ministry.
Another old custom that has been revived is
the prayer posture of praying with hands
extended towards heaven.
At the Statio Orbis Mass that ended the
Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia last
August, an amazing number of participants
prayed and sang in this ancient prayer posture,
particularly during the Communion.
Charismatic phrases like “Alleluia,” “Praise
the Lord,” and “Jesus Christ is Lord,” have
found their way to the heart of Catholicism. In
1975 on Pentecost Sunday, Pope Paul VI ended
a warm greeting to the International
Conference on Charismatic Renewal with
“Alleluia, Jesus Christ is Lord.”
There are those who are cautious and even
apprehensive about the Charismatic Renewal
movement, but there is no denying the fact that
it has restored the Holy Spirit to the center of
worship for thousands.
To them the Holy Spirit is not a divine
non-entity, a holy dove or a white tornado. The
Holy Spirit is power, the gift par excellence of
Jesus and the Father, a gift that enables the
Christian to say with St. Paul ... “I live now,
not I, but Christ lives in me,” a gift that has
created a new hunger for prayer, for the
Eucharist and the Sacraments, and for the Word
of God.
Regardless of how one feels about the
Charismatic Renewal, it must be admitted that
it has made obsolete the description of the
Holy Spirit as “the forgotten person of the
Holy Trinity.”
For that we can all Praise the Lord.
KNOW
YOUR
FAITH
(All Articles On This Page
Copyrighted 197 7 by N.C. News Service)