Transcript

Throughout my, my life of faith, I have, um I've had a practice of looking for where is the Holy Spirit at work, and, and how can I be sure I'm there?

And, and ask, and pray for the, um, courage to- to follow the Holy Spirit.

Um, so that's been part of my personal spirituality.

But there have been times, like where, you know, the Holy Spirit's called you to places you don't want to go.

Um, but then when I get there, I'm looking, I'm counting on- on the Holy Spirit to show up.

Every day before I step into the pulpit to preach, I always pray this little prayer.

Come, Holy Spirit.

Come by the means of the powerful intercession of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, your well-beloved spouse.

And I love this prayer because it invokes the Holy Spirit, but it also invokes Our Lady.

And I found over the years that it's a prayer that works, that when I pray this prayer reverently and devotedly and trust in it, that the Holy Spirit comes and- and speaks to me, and not for my own sake, but for the sake of the people to whom I'm preaching.

I come most immediately into the Catholic Church from the Pentecostal tradition.

And if there's one tradition in the world that talks about the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost, it's the Pentecostals.

And that's one thing I really appreciated with them, because bef- before all of that, I- I didn't have much sense of the reality of the Holy Spirit.

And it is a- a difficult thing for us.

The- the Father, because we call Him Father, we can think of Him in kind of a fatherly image, even though He- He's not doesn't have a human body the way the Lord does, Jesus Christ.

But the Son, we can think of because He- He did, was given a face, and we can imagine what that human face might be like.

The Holy Spirit, the most we- we get in scripture of an image is of a dove or a fire or a wind or the oil of anointing.

So much harder to know Him as- as a real person.

I remember reading one time, I don't even remember what theologian.

He- he said he- he would take the phrase from scripture that says, you know, when Jesus said, I'm going before you to- to Galilee, and there I'll see you.

He said in his own practice he would insert, instead of Galilee, he would insert wherever it was he was going in his prayer.

And he would say, you know, I'm gonna look for you there.

I'm gonna look and- and help me to see where you're at work.

And to me, you know, that's the Holy Spirit.

So I- I added that to my, uh, spiritual practice at the time.

And- and- and one illustration that I- I share is I- I have five children.

And my fourth child, uh, my daughter, was born with- with Down syndrome.

And we didn't know before she was born that- that she had that, and so we were rather in shock at first and we were trying to process, um, that news.

And so over- over the course of the next several days, and when we found out she had a heart condition and all kinds of things, you're- you're sort of in the- in the fog of war, so to speak.

Um, I'm praying and- and trying to process where we are and- and what we need, and- and where's God, just like I'd always done.

And- and it occurred to me that, you know, this situation wasn't about us, and it probably wasn't even about my daughter.

It was about other people and who she would encounter, and who God had called her to be in his plan of salvation.

And- and I think that that process, or that, uh, practice of looking for God, looking for the Holy Spirit in my life, I think that helped me to see things new and different.

And- and it really stopped me in my tracks when I realized it wasn't about any of us.

It was about what God had brought her to the world to do.

And one of the beautiful things I learned in- in studying Catholic theology, in studying the Trinity, was how the- the Father and the Son had eternally loved each other.

They- they have loved each other from before all time.

And that their love is so real, that that love is the third person of the Trinity.

Saint Thomas talks about that, that that love between Father and Son actually is so real that it is itself a person.

The person of the Holy Spirit.

And that has meant so much to me ever since, that he's- he's not just the one who comes in power, which is the emphasis in the Pentecostal tradition, but he is the one who is love himself.

So many times, as well, as I'm sitting in a counseling session with someone who's in trouble, that's come to me for help, I ask the Holy Spirit for- for wisdom and guidance.

And it's been my experience, again, that- that God hears that prayer, and that the Holy Spirit comes to imbue my words as a priest for the sake of the person who's there, coming, asking for help.

There've been countless times as a priest, and- and just as a regular man, that I've- I've called upon the Holy Spirit for help.

And even though you don't always feel him in- in- in a particular way, by faith I know that he comes, and that I know that he works through me because I've asked him to.

When we earnestly seek God's will and we ask for our Lord's Holy Spirit to come upon us to help us fulfill that will no matter what the cost, it's a prayer that our Lord always answers.