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Like the wind

 

            Some people with COVID have lost their taste. This is one of the possible symptoms of COVID, among others.  This is not the most serious manifestation, but those affected say how inconvenient it is for them. Perhaps you know some of them; perhaps that is your case. I say this because of the Holy Spirit whose coming we celebrated on the day of Pentecost. Indeed, the Holy Spirit is the one who gives us a taste for the things of God: he gives us a taste for prayer, a taste for the Word of God, for the reading of the Gospels and the Bible, a taste also for our brothers: he gives us to really care about them. Come, Holy Spirit, gives us the taste of God.

            Unlike the names "Father" and "Son", the name given to the person of the Holy Spirit is not a name usually given to a person. That is why, to talk about him, we often also resort to comparisons, to images: fire, wind, water, light, oil... I will stay at the image of the wind. On the day of Pentecost, it is the wind that shakes the house where the apostles are, this wind of which Jesus said: "The wind blows where it wants, you do not know where it comes from, you do not know where it is going". Like the great wind of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit can shake up a life, cause conversion; like the wind that allows sailboats to move forward, the Holy Spirit gives us to move forward in our lives as believers.

           

            The wind, we do not see it; what we see are the effects it produces. When a tree is agitated by the wind, I do not see the wind, but I see the effect it produces: the leaves move... I see the leaves moving and I know that the wind that I do not see is there.

            In the Church and in our world, the Holy Spirit that I do not see is there. For example, men and women gather on Sunday mornings in a church; they are seen heading to the church and meet there. They don't go to a show. Their gathering is the work of the Holy Spirit! The one we do not see, the Holy Spirit, sets them in motion and brings them together. Or men and women live together in a monastery where they pray and work: it is the Holy Spirit who brings them together. People welcome the poor, help those in need: it is the Holy Spirit who pushes believers to these gestures of fraternity. Or, elderly people meet regularly to live times of conviviality and spirituality as part of the Ascending Life movement, it is the Holy Spirit who brings them to these meetings. Let us get used to see in these ordinary manifestations of the life of the Church the extraordinary work of the Holy Spirit!

            Five times in the Gospel of St. John, Jesus promised to send us the Holy Spirit; and in the book of Acts of the Apostles, Saint Luke describes on several occasions the coming of the Holy Spirit. We check that these words announce a reality. We see this reality every day. There may be exceptional manifestations of the Holy Spirit: he is free, he "blows wherever he wants". But above all, let's be attentive to its daily manifestations, which seem banal only to accustomed eyes and superficial looks. When we see the leaves of the trees moving, we know that the wind is there. When we see the baptized living and acting, let us learn to recognize the presence of the Holy Spirit.

 

Father François Maupu