STRIVING FOR COMMUNION WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT

TUESDAY, SEVENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP 

James 4:1-10; Ps 55:7-11,23; Mk 9:30-37

Striving for Communion with the Holy Spirit

The Easter season ended with the celebration of the Pentecost on Sunday. We have relived the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the apostles and prayed for his renewed activity within us. The celebration of Mary, mother of the Church, is well situated by the Church, for the Blessed Virgin Mary precedes all in the reception of the divine Spirit and communion with him. One of the numerous reasons we recite the Rosary very often is to meditate on her many virtues and better imitate her life of holiness and purity. Shining the most among her virtues is her profound humility, which is the virtue with which she crushes the head of the proud serpent. Her profound humility made her the dwelling place of the Trinity. She is the Garden enclosed where the Most High delights to repose. St. James recommended the virtue of humility in the first reading. “But he [God] has been even more generous to us, as scripture says: God opposes the proud but he gives generously to the humble.” Because God gives generously to the humble, he gave the humblest Virgin his Holy Spirit and his Word most without stint. Thus, there is no better recommendation for us as we enter the ordinary time of the Church than to pray the Rosary more meditatively and attentively. 

We must recite the Rosary prayer to obtain enough graces to do the will of God. This is the correct intention for every prayer, according to St. James. To desire anything else is to risk the rejection of our prayers. “You want something and you haven’t got it; so you are prepared to kill. You have an ambition that you cannot satisfy; so you fight to get your way by force. Why you don’t have what you want is because you don’t pray for it; when you do pray and don’t get it, it is because you have not prayed properly, you have prayed for something to indulge your own desires.” The Spirit is given to us so that we may pray properly. But to learn to pray with the Spirit, we must give ourselves to him completely, following the example of the Virgin Mother of Jesus. Coming to life in the Spirit means abandoning our old life and desires; we must abandon our old mind and way of thinking and acquire a new mind with a single desire: to know and do the will of God the Father. 

The will of the Father is the Bread that comes down from heaven to give life to the world. This central content of the prayer of the redeemed is in the Lord’s prayer. Any prayer or petition made outside the will of the Father is bound to be fruitless. The Advocate is with us to teach us how to pray and desire according to the will of the Father. It took the apostles time to understand this core meaning of spirituality as lived and taught by our Lord. Thus, while he was talking to them about his coming passion and death, they were busy fighting about the position of authority. Such a mindset is inimical to our communion with the Holy Spirit and never pleasing to God. “What were you arguing about on the road? They said nothing because they had been arguing which of them was the greatest. So he sat down, called the twelve to him and said, ‘If anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last of all and servant of all.” Therefore, the best place to start building a good communion with the indwelling Holy Spirit is deep within our conscious desires; let us put the desire to know the will of God to do his will in our lives. This is what living a heavenly or spiritual life entails. The quiet and meditative recitation of the holy Rosary would benefit us in this regard. The mysteries therein offer us a concise summary of the life and events of Lord Jesus Christ. 

Let us pray: Grant us, Lord, the grace to desire above all to know you and to do your divine will in all things, so that following the example of Mary our Mother, we may attain true communion with the Holy Spirit.