In some parts of Africa, the boys are very fond of riding on dead tree trunks which sometimes float down the river.  One day a boy got on one of these tree trunks for a ride but as he was going nicely along something very strange happened.  The tree trunk began to wake up, and when he saw a huge mouth, full of teeth, opening in front of him he realised that all the time he had been sitting, not on a dead piece of wood as he had thought, but on a very alive crocodile.  As you can imagine he didn’t stay on it long, and after that he was rather more careful in his choice of craft!

The Giver of Life

In somewhat the same way, when we go for a walk in the fields or the park, we often forget that the grass we tread on, although it cannot bite us like the crocodile, is alive for all that.  In fact, in the countryside most of the things we can see are alive: plants and hedges as well as animals and birds and insects.

All of this life comes from God.  We can kill, but we cannot make alive.  Only God is the Giver of Life.  The Jews learnt that it was the Life or Spirit of God which makes things live.  So the writer of one of the Psalms, when he was thinking of the young animals and birds in the spring, and the countryside made new and fresh after the winter, said “When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground” (NRSV, 104:30) (cf Genesis 2:7).

Giver of Light

Not only, however, did the Spirit of God give life to Nature, it also taught people, and especially the prophets, the truth about God.  We often think of ignorance as darkness and the knowledge of the truth as light.  To keep a person in the dark means to keep him or her in ignorance of the truth; to bring something to light means to make it known.  So at a time when the minds of the Jews were darkened with pagan and wrong ideas about God, it was the Spirit of God which gave the light of the truth to the prophets and they taught it to the people.  Thus one of the prophets said, “…I am filled with power, with the spirit of the Lord” (NRSV, Micah 3:8).

Pentecost (Whitsunday)

At that time only a few people, the prophets, were given God’s Spirit.  Many years later, however, Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit of God to his Apostles, but the great difference was that Jesus spoke of the Holy Spirit as a real, living Person, not as something but as Someone.  “When the Advocate (Helper) comes”, Jesus said, “whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf” (NRSV, John 15:26).  “…he abides with you, and he will be in you” (NRSV, John 14:17).

Before Jesus ascended to Heaven, therefore, he told the Apostles to stay on in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came to them, which would be in a few days. 

Each morning they must have wondered, “Will he come today?”  At last, 10 days later on the Feast of Pentecost (Whitsunday), they were all together at nine o’clock in the morning when they heard the sound of a great breeze, a rushing, mighty wind and saw what looked like tongues of fire settling on one another’s heads.  They did not see the Holy Spirit but it was at that moment that he came into their souls.

We often call the Holy Spirit the ‘Holy Ghost’, ghost being an old word for spirit.

Just as our bodies need breath or air to keep them alive, so the wind, the breath of life, showed that the Holy Spirit was the Giver of Life, who brought the life of God himself to their souls, thus making it possible for them to live good and holy lives.

The fire or light meant that he was also the Spirit of Truth, the Giver of Light, who would enlighten their minds and guide them, as Jesus promised, into all truth (John 16:13).

When they had received the Holy Spirit they went out into the street, and St Peter told the crowd which had collected outside to be sorry for all the wrong they had done and to be baptised.  “Repent, and be baptized …” he said, “and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (NRSV, Acts 2:38).  So about 3,000 were baptised (christened) and the Holy Spirit came into their souls also, just as he came into your soul and mine when we were baptised.  The Holy Spirit also comes into our souls at Confirmation.

SUMMARY

1. God the Holy Spirit, or Holy Ghost, is the Lord and Giver of Light and Life.  That is to say, he enables us to know what we ought to do and gives us his power to do it.  He also gives life to all Nature.

2. God the Holy Spirit first came to the Apostles at Pentecost (Whitsunday), and to people today at their Baptism and Confirmation.