COMMENT by Paul Train

Whatever power for good we may have comes from the grace of the Holy Spirit in us.  All of God’s people can have share in this gift.

How does this gift of the Holy Spirit on the day of resurrection relate to the outpouring of divine power which came on the feast of Pentecost fifty days later?

To enquire too anxiously is to misunderstand the eternal presence of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and to set limits on the infinite.

Our need to package God into convenient, easily assimilated portions, frustrated by boundaries or time and location defines our experience and ability to learn.  Yet is God’s condescension to our weakness that we hold onto—somehow imagining that He only works in the world from time to time and in convenient places.

The risen Christ empowers those who are to follow him, from that evening in the Upper Room through the generations until our time.  The power from on high is indiscriminate, it is there for all of us, a strength not of our own, but an empowerment facilitating us all to become co-workers in the unfolding of his purpose.  The Holy Spirit comes in the fullness of power and enabling love, not only in the sacraments of the Church, but at every moment when our souls are open to God.

May we, one and all, set forward with this season, when the Spirit descended.   That we may grow in grace and the knowledge of God.  Let those who have had seasons of seriousness, lengthen them into a life; and let those who have made good resolves in lent, not forget them in Eastertide; and let those who have hitherto lived religiously, learn devotion; and those who have made good profession, aim at consistency; those who take pleasure in worship, aim at inward sanctity; those who have knowledge, learn to love; those who meditate, forget not mortification.

Let not this season leave us as it found us, let it leave us not as children, but as heirs and citizens of the kingdom of heaven.

JH Newman

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