Receive the Holy Ghost

“ Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained. ”

How do we receive the Holy Ghost? Jesus blew on His apostles in the upper room and spoke it over them. These same disciples were again in the upper room with 120 followers of Jesus and, with a light resembling a flame and the sound of wind, the Holy Ghost filled them with power and wisdom from above. St. Peter then preached in the streets and instructed them to be baptized for the forgiveness of their sins and they would receive the Holy Ghost. The Apostles laid their hands with prayer on the heads of newly baptized Samaritans and the Holy Ghost became evident.

What is the evidence of the Holy Ghost? What is the value in having Him living inside you?

The least spoken of Person of the Holy Trinity is the closest of the Persons to us, when we have become faithful believers. The Father loves us, but from heaven above. The Son has ascended and we encounter Him today in signs and elements of bread and wine, His Body and Blood. But the Father and Son sent us the Holy Spirit to dwell within us, to inform us of His holy will, to instruct us, to correct our misdeeds, to cleanse us, and to further the purposes of the Church on earth. It is the Spirit that washes us and comes inside of us at Baptism. It is the Spirit that empowers our lives with holy gifts at Confirmation. The Spirit is invoked by the bishop at the ordination of a deacon, priest or another bishop. We invoke the Holy Spirit with the Word Incarnate upon the Eucharistic sacrifice to creatively sanctify those wafers and that chalice to become our Lord. Together with the Father and Son, the Holy Spirit is named in every blessing, consecration and absolution.

And yet you don't see Him, hear Him, or feel Him unless you are very sensitive or it is a unique situation. He doesn't reveal much about Himself, because that is not His purpose. He comes to reveal the Father and Son to us, and heal us, and restore us to God. It's inappropriate and even dangerous to make our religion be primarily about the Holy Spirit and His powers, signs, miracles, wonders . Any powerful spiritual being can dazzle us.

We have some dazzling powers ourselves. Whatever is born of God brings down the world of sin and death. We become born again from above through our faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. His baptism and sacrifice become our baptism and other sacraments. The Holy Spirit has led the Church for 2,000 years to follow these means of grace, not just a spirit-religion based on mystery power. Our sacramental and incarnational life of faith is lived out in each other's presence and in the Presence of Christ, in a holy fellowship, in contact with flesh and blood…

The pale luminous screen flickers and displays the dancing image of a well-coiffured man in a white Nehru suit, ever clutching a large cordless microphone. Magically the stage lights follow him and occasionally words of Scripture are superimposed on the screen. Excited and quivering, members of the audience are led on stage and one by one, the dancing figure approaches them to slap his palm on their foreheads and breathe the Name of Jesus Christ. The devoted fans fall backward, caught in practiced arms and laid senseless on their backs. Voices rise and shout, while an address is shown where you may send your gift of love.

Did Jesus come and die for this? An addiction to unprovable signs and questionable miracles on television can stop a person from getting to the true Christ. It can become a substitute for the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of truth never intended us to betray the church in order to follow a media star.

The legacy of John Paul II will perhaps be marred with a similar folk religion heroism and ill-placed worship, but please don't let religious fervor eclipse the life and contribution of a great man of God who served the world's largest Christian denomination as its head for 26 years, and as priest and bishop far longer. Photos of him will not bleed or do miracles, but the hands of the latest Patriarch of the West have healed, blessed and given to more human beings than any others in our lives. And the gifts he gave were by the Holy Ghost. John Paul II, who passed to his well-earned reward yesterday, did groundbreaking work in reconciling the Roman church to the Orthodox and Protestant branches of Christianity, to the Jews, the Moslems and the entire world. While he was being honored at a ceremony in Tel Aviv, an old Jewish woman approached him, telling her story of being a teenaged girl who had barely survived the Nazi death camps, but was naked and starving and nearly dead upon a road after the Allied armies had liberated them. A young Polish priest picked up her emaciated body and carried her to the next town and took care of her so that she lived . “That priest was you!” she cried, and the old woman embraced the Pope. The evidence of the Holy Spirit at work in such reconciliation is so much greater than showmanship and fancy camerawork.

Jesus rocked the world of His Apostles by having the warnings of His own arrest, trial, and crucifixion come terribly true. He shook them to the marrow by being raised to life again the third day from His death. He seemed to walk through walls and appeared suddenly with them, assuring them of Peace. He displayed the wounds of His painful death, but again imparted Peace from the Father. Then with His breath upon them, He gave the Holy Spirit to them, quite literally consecrating them as His first bishops. “ Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained,” He said.

The Holy Ghost is not given for us to do parlor tricks. He is not given so that we might have a personal miraculous ability. He is not given in order to make people rich. He is given to empower God's gracious gift of reconciliation: the power to forgive sin and set it aside forever. I have never seen a televangelist forgive sins. I have seen them assure others of God's forgiveness, but the power of absolution offends them, while the power to cause fainting seems normal to some of them. I can't find any biblical support for this, though I've seen it in person with my own eyes. Where it comes from, I don't know. But I see no real fruit in it.

I've spent some significant time in the company of our new bishop, James Provence, since his enthronement here a year ago. I have known Bishop Provence as my friend Jim for 26 years. But since his consecration, and especially since ascending to bishop ordinary of the Diocese of the Western States, I have watched him minister to hurting, worried, frightened and angry people with a pastor's heart, an historian's clear understanding of how things turned out so, a prophetic grasp of where we are headed, and a bishop's power to lead and sacramentally impart grace. I have witnessed the Holy Spirit working through him and I have wondered at the transformation of my friend into a true bishop of souls, a father of a family, an incarnation of God's grace in human flesh . I hadn't expected what I've seen. We are truly heaven-blessed with a bishop over us whom we may call, visit, cry to, laugh with and live with in the comfort that he knows each of you as I do, as Christ does, as the Holy Spirit does. Your synod delegates will soon be treated to more time with him in San Francisco, a little town on the Bay where he is the only priest or bishop who walks its streets in a clerical collar. He is becoming the only bishop of that city.

Christ breathed on them, the Holy Spirit was given, and the Church became His arm of reconciling a world back to Himself. We who minister in His Name are humbled by the grace given us, the power we wield, but not for ourselves. We stand and hold Christ's Body and breathe over wine to have it made His Blood, by the Spirit within us.

I am a Catholic Christian, and so are you. We were not members of the Roman church, having separated ourselves into an Anglican Catholic branch of Christ's One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. The head of that other family of fellow Christians died yesterday, having led its billion members long and well. Christ's impartation was kept going through indwelling that Polish priest all his days. We have been blessed to witness his acts, hear his loving words and note his passion for life, denouncing this world's culture of death. We honor him with prayer and intercede for his church to choose a godly successor.

PFH+