2023-02-25 A Meditation on Spirit

“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” (Ro 8:26 ESV)

The Holy Spirit is shared and flourishes to turn man’s failures, frustrations, enmities, unto a multi-faceted garment of praise and salvation. The Holy Spirit achieves escape velocity, doing this in wide availability and servitude, finding redeemed lives either in Man’s right walk or just as easily in Man’s ignominy and sin. All this to say that Spirit resolves beyond Man’s ken. Today, let us walk as though servant to a Higher and Broad Agent “out there”. Today, let us walk as though more optimistic than all the pundits and pragmatic judges, the effectors of culture and common law, of court trials and public laud or degradation. For we degrade, but yawn a bit in light of Spirit who loves through it, who blesses in words beyond the rabid critique of Man. All shall be redeemed. This world, and all its sinful ways. Our own Encounter with Man’s penitence, leading us not to proud or nervous caution, but to brave and holy self-discovery: we, too, are sinners. We, too, can go a step farther, not competing any longer (though that word “compete” was once mentioned in nothing but passing, insofar as we thought our Lord was proposing we earn our disciplining licks and praises by putting forward a better side of ourselves than that of our peer and friend), but instead accepting Divine Mystery greater than the sum of our own self-conceptions.

Together, the Male and the Female. Together, the Prodigal and the Long Faithful. Together, the Creature and the Creator. Together, the Child and the Midwife. Together, the Advocate and the Oppressed. Together, the Blamed, Faulted, and the Heroic One who reaches out. For we reach out because the battle is too strong to go it alone. We reach out because life is lived as though rolling with the punches or getting by with a little help from our friends, through life’s scrappiness, it’s fighting ways, it’s impossible points of identification.

Together we identify and are bold to say “No” to the naysayers, to take the kool-aid and see things a different way, no longer bound up by the shrill sound of another’s voice, but patient and judicious to reckon. We see the addiction to fasting and religious observance, and how that eats up the time. We see the clarion call this day to know salvation still isn’t too far away, only many will doubt because the passage of another day has only made that salvation more distant. It has added a new element perhaps of the brand of humility required. It has tamed and rewarded with a prize from some entity slightly less than the Spirit we try to contact. Or perhaps a window has opened up anew, because a persecutor has relented for a moment.

In prayer we contact the Holy Spirit, and are led to new vistas. We have never heard ourselves loved like this. We answer many-a-question in the affirmative: have you ever felt truly loved for who you are? Have you some context for understanding where your charges and pupils are coming from? Today, do you have any need or fear or insecurity? Can we provide spiritual sanctuary? For each of us has our daily battles, with our own flesh at times.