At the Baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan, the Holy Spirit visibly came down on Him in the form of a dove. Two things happened simultaneously as the Spirit descended upon Him.
First, the Father declared His delight in Jesus: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased” (Mt. 3:17). The Father found delight in His Son even before His Son Jesus Christ did anything spectacular, performed any public miracle, or preached a sermon.
Second, the Son embraced His public mission to please the Father alone in all things, even if it meant death on a cross. Jesus attested to both His Father’s loving presence with Him and His determination to please the Father in all things, saying, “He who sent me is with me; He has not left me alone, for I always do what is pleasing to Him” (Jn. 8:29).
This is an invaluable lesson for us, the Church. We cannot please God or do anything truly pleasing to Him without the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Without His Spirit in us, we will seek to please ourselves or others or even give in to the spirit of the world that is completely opposite to the Spirit of God—“For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world” (1 Jn. 2:16). We can only please God in this world when we are grounded on the three reasons why we received the Holy Spirit.
Firstly, the Holy Spirit is given to us to make us truly pleasing to God as His beloved children. The risen Christ offered both peace and the Spirit to His scared disciples: “’Peace be with you . . . receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (Jn. 20:19-23). By the power of this Spirit, we are cleansed of our sins in Baptism and in the sacrament of Reconciliation. Our hearts are filled with the love and grace of God that makes us truly pleasing to Him no matter our sins and sufferings. We are pleasing to Him irrespective of what we do or fail to do.
Secondly, the Holy Spirit is given to us to help us make use of all things in pleasing God alone. The Holy Spirit makes us to believe and relate to Jesus Christ as our sovereign Lord on whom we depend and whom we strive to please in all things, for “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.” We make use of all things and all circumstances to serve the Lord with His gifts, as St. Paul writes, “There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same Lord” (1 Cor. 12:3-7). Without the Spirit in our lives, we will begin to live as the lords of our lives. We will delude ourselves by thinking we can live our lives the way that we want without any regard to the will of God for us. We will abuse and misuse God’s gifts to us, and we will have little or no desire to do what is pleasing to God.
Lastly, the Holy Spirit is given to us to help bring others to God. The disciples spoke in tongues on Pentecost Sunday in a way that shocked the devout Jews in Jerusalem. But the disciples did not draw attention to themselves or proclaim their own virtues; they pointed the crowd to God. They knew that the Spirit was not given to them for their personal benefit only but to bring others to God.
The devout Jews commented, “We hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God” (Acts 2:1-11). St. Peter would eventually speak powerful words that touched the heart of his audience so that they were converted and brought into the Church, “So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:40).
By the power of the same Spirit, we too can live and proclaim the Gospel in our world today, to touch the many hardened hearts of our times, and to bring them to communion with Jesus and His Church. We can and should be instruments of the Spirit in bringing back all our strayed loved ones who have abandoned the Catholic Faith.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we Christians are in the middle of a great spiritual combat with the spirit of this world that attacks us through our fallen flesh, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; and it does not submit to God’s law, indeed it cannot; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:7-8). We cannot live according to the Holy Spirit and the worldly spirit of the flesh at the same time. Our choice will determine our ability to please God in this life and in the next.
When we live according to the flesh and not according to the Holy Spirit, we have no idea of how pleasing we are to God. We do not believe that we are pleasing to God as His children because we are not feeling good about ourselves or our lives. We judge our self-worth based on our possessions, enjoyments, and emotions and not based on the word of God and the gift of the Spirit that we have from the risen Christ.
When we live according to the world and follow the dictates of the flesh, we do not realize the power that we have to do what is pleasing to God with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Consequently, we give into the many forms of immorality in our culture today. We are ready to please everyone else but God. We compromise on our faith and morals because we are afraid of being different from others.
When we are controlled by the worldly spirit, we ignore the power that we have to help others. We become indifferent to evil in the lives of our loved ones. We are reluctant to speak the difficult but liberating truth of the Gospel. We are petrified to exemplify or call others to repentance, so we say, “Who am I to judge?”
The risen Christ both gave us His Spirit and peace. His peace is ours only when we live according to the purpose for which He gave us His Spirit.
By the grace of the Eucharist, let us strive to live according to that purpose so that His peace will reign in our hearts, even in this evil world.
Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!
Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash
