Pentecost, 2023
From The Pastor
Love is the core of what makes us human beings. It is a timeless and universal truth that the deepest longing of every human being is to be loved. Human beings animated and secure in the awareness and experience of love will live happy and productive lives. People secure in love will be a source of light, peace, and strength to those looking for acceptance, belonging, and mercy with a valued sense of personal worth.
Human beings who lacked the experience of love, acceptance, security, or belonging in the early formative years will search for validation of positive self-regard, and the affirmation of being enough in the eyes of others. Love has many faces, expressions, and solicitations as it remains the core identity of what it means to be human. In both healthy and unhealthy ways, love is a primary motivation that animates our lives. Those secure in love serve as agents of love and goodness for others. Those in need of love and the healing it offers search to be accepted, recognized, and a part of valued relationships.
Pentecost is the Feast of Divine Love showered on the world after the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus. The Holy Spirit is the love of God; the essence of love between the Father and the Son given to the world to heal, sanctify, and unite humanity and all creation in the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus. The Holy Spirit is for everyone; those richly endowed with human love as well as those who pine in their wounds longing for forgiveness and acceptance.
As Baptized Christians, you have the Holy Spirit. It is undeniably received in the grace and power of Baptism. Given that most of us were Baptized as infants, it may be a challenge to realize and accept the evidence of the Spirit in our lives. If you believe in Christ and seek to live a life of love, it is impossible to not have the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that initiates and promotes the love we seek and long for, as well as the love we share through any form of charity.
People will often wonder how they are to know the Spirit in their lives. For the Baptized, the Spirit is given as standard operating equipment. How do I know?
Faith is the beginning. Faith is an active living relationship with God through Christ with secure trust in the truth and promise of redemption. This cannot simply be a coat one wears or a religious identity one carries. Living relationships grow bonds of love that develop a keen sense of identity one to the other. Those bonded in love learn how to read, perceive, and understand the subtleties of the moods and rhythms of the beloved. You begin to know their thoughts, feelings, needs, and desires. In this knowing, love offers its response.
This kind of love grows through an internal ownership and acceptance of the security and trust found in love. People who know love learn to read its rhythms. In the case of faith, Christ becomes an internal ownership and core identity of who you are as a believer. This is way beyond the church you go to and the religious devotions you may practice. Good religion may make us feel good with some sense of God’s presence. An interior ownership of acceptance of the person of Christ and the redemption he has given us is a much deeper reality.
In this core sense of faith, Christ and the rhythms of the Holy Spirit become the motivation and animation of how we live in relationship with others and with the world. Consider the transformation of the first disciples in the upper room. They knew Jesus personally and loved him deeply. He had become the core and identity of how they knew themselves as loved and valued. In his death, they abandoned him and fled in fear. Hidden behind locked doors they feared for their lives in the trauma of his death and in the shame they felt. Still, their love for him kept them together.
Jesus appears offering a word of peace. This word of peace is one of healing and forgiveness. Now the disciples rejoice as they feel the security of His love. Jesus then breathes on them the new life of the Holy Spirit. In the Spirit of Love, they are given the power to forgive sin and to be forgiven. This was a lived, felt experience. Their bonds of love were deep and strong. In time, they learned to read the rhythms of the Spirit in their lives as the living presence of Jesus with them. All they did and all they became grew from their core identity and commitment to Jesus as Lord and Christ.
As a Christian, what is your core identity? What motivates and animates your life in love? Look deeply into yourself beyond ego, social standing, your friend’s group, titles, or favored accomplishments. Who are you in Christ and how is Christ known in you? This is where you will learn to see, perceive, and listen to the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is not trying to be hidden or hard to get. The Spirit is always present and always coming to you. The Spirit is an endless and eternal gift of the Father and the Son.
If you feel unworthy, wounded, or unable to find the Holy Spirit, ask the Spirit to reveal himself to you. Ask for healing. Seek mature love through your trust and confidence in Jesus. Listen and pay attention. In some way, the Spirit will be speaking to you. Today’s feast belongs to you. Rejoice in the Holy Spirit.
Father John Esper
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