Bound in Love

It is Pentecost. It is the coming of the Holy Spirit and the beginning of the global missionary activity of the Church. It is part of a sweeping arc of glory and hope in the church calendar.

That arc begins with the Annunciation to Mary, and then Christmas, the Nativity of Jesus, the Son of God coming into his own creation as one of his creatures. It climbs to the glory of the sacrifice on the Cross of Good Friday, when Jesus paid the price for our salvation. It continues in glorious victory with the resurrection on Easter Sunday. This is followed by 40 days of proof-testing in which the same Jesus who was killed is seen alive in his body by many witnesses. Then he ascends to heaven by his own power to go to his throne where he will sit until he returns in judgment at the end of time. Before he ascended to heaven, Jesus promised his disciples he would leave them an advocate, a comforter, a guide. Today, that third Person of the Trinity is here.

In going up bodily to heaven, that is his soul and his body united and integrated, Jesus has consecrated for all of us the human body. He has raised it to a level of dignity and ultimate glory that it did not have until he assumed our human nature and took that up to heaven.

During the days around the Ascension we hear the phrase, “he led captivity captive.” That odd wording leads us to inquire what one could mean by “captivity captive.” The answer is death. After the fall of Adam and Eve, all human nature was captive to the rule of death, the rule of Satan, who dominates the world. On Ash Wednesday we hear the reminder that “we are dust and to dust we shall return.” That was the consequence of the original sin. But Jesus, the Son of God, was obedient to the heavenly Father even unto death on the Cross. In making that sacrifice, and in ascending to Heaven 40 days later, he raised the dignity of the human body to a height it did not have beforehand. In rising to his heavenly throne, Jesus led the regime of death that held us captive to its own captivity. We now live in Christ, free from death, if we accept the gift of his redemptive sacrifice.

Today on the feast of Pentecost, we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit. Jesus describes the Holy Spirit as an advocate; it is the comforter, the breath of God. The presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives is a constant reminder that sanctifying grace is always available to us. The Holy Spirit is ever present and he is ever available if we ever choose to turn to him and ask for help. We do turn to him when we turn to our prayers. We do turn to him when we have stumbled by going to the sacrament of confession, where we are reconciled to the God who made us and the God who loves us.

Jesus left us this comforter because he knows the challenge we face. After the ascension of Jesus Christ to his throne in heaven, his children remain left behind to walk in their own earthly mission before they face their particular judgment and go to a place of waiting until the general judgment at the end of time.

At the general judgment, our souls will be reunited with our bodies, and it is God’s plan that we spend eternity in our glorified bodies beholding his beatific vision. But we have to get there. And our journey there while we are alive here on earth is our own personal desert wandering. Like the ancient Israelites spending their 40 years in the desert, the new Israel — the church called to assembly by Jesus Christ — has a journey in a strange and uncomfortable land where we will be tested to remain faithful to a God who sometimes seems remote. The new Israel is never actually kept remote from God because the Holy Spirit is always with us, and He is always seeking a deeper relationship with each of us.

In his long discourse to his disciples in the upper room the night before his passion, Jesus described the advocate that he would send to his church. He described the Holy Spirit as the spirit of truth.

As strangers in a strange land, we need the spirit of truth because we live in a world dominated by a lie. The overwhelming lie of the world is that we cannot trust our heavenly Father. This was the lie that Adam and Eve accepted in the Garden of Eden. It is the lie of the pure reason of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. It is the lie of Socialism and Communism, it is the lie of Modernism, and it is the lie of materialistic consumer culture. The liar says we cannot trust our heavenly Father, so we must pursue worldly power and worldly pleasure.

But we can trust our heavenly father, and the spirit of truth is always at our side to encourage us to keep walking forward in truthfulness rather than to circle endlessly in doubt. When the storms of life come, the spirit points us to the safe haven we wish for. If we listen to the spirit, we will find our way home to our heavenly father.

St. Irenaeus said in the second century, “The glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God.”

After the Ascension, the Church lost its vision of God because Jesus went up to his throne. With the coming of the Holy Spirit, we recover a vision of God in the sacraments. With the help of the Holy Spirit, we can keep God in our sight even in a world that behaves as if God does not exist. Resting in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, we have the sure hope of eternal life in Heaven. The Holy Spirit has come down upon us at Pentecost so we may be fully alive, both in this fallen world while we work out our own salvation and finally beholding the vision of God for all eternity.