The Holy Spirit in Daily Life
by Fr. David M. Knight
Thursday, October 10, 2024
Twenty-Seventh Week of the Year
Lectionary 464
Gal 3:1-5/Lk 11:5-13
Galatians 3:1-5: Paul tells us the predominate experience of our Christian life from day to day should be the experience of the Holy Spirit. Not a preoccupation with keeping laws, or even life-giving absorption in ministry, but the awareness of doing all of these things as moved by the Holy Spirit, responding to the Holy Spirit, using the “Gifts of the Spirit” and realizing the “Fruit of the Spirit” in our lives. It is not enough to notice these as virtues or good qualities in ourselves. We need to recognize them as gifts received and accepted from the living, indwelling Spirit in our hearts. As interaction with the Spirit acting in us. (The Gifts of the Spirit are wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, piety, fortitude and fear of the Lord. The Fruit is love, joy, peace, patient endurance, kindness, fidelity, generosity, gentleness and self control. Isaiah 11:2; Galatians 5:22-23.)
Our religion, like our life, is and should be consciously in the image of the Trinity—Father, Son and Spirit—who are distinct as Persons through their relationship—that is, interaction—with each other. We should know ourselves as Christian persons through our interactions with God and with others “in the Spirit.”
Paul appeals to the Galatians’ experience of the Holy Spirit to prove his point that we are saved by faith—sharing in God’s own act of knowing by sharing in God’s own divine life, which is “grace”—rather than by the “performance record” of our good behave or in observance of the laws, rules and practices of our religion. He argues from their experience:
How did you receive the Spirit?... Is it because you observe the law or because you have faith in what you heard that God lavishes the Spirit on you and works wonders in your midst?
Those “wonders” need not be miracles. What we call the “charismatic gifts” do not have to take the form of speaking in tongues or proclaiming a “prophecy.” The “gift of tongues” is essentially a surrender to spontaneous expression of something within us that we may not precisely identify. It can be experienced by singing at Mass! And “prophecy” is the expression of an insight that comes from God: a comment in a parish council meeting, or simply good (but God-given) advice to a friend. Those who consciously and habitually interact with God will know he is acting on them, in them and through them. This is the “experience of the Spirit.”
Luke 11:5-13 gives us an example. A man gets out of bed to help a persistent friend. It could be no more than that. But it could also be the experience—subconscious, at least—of being like the “heavenly Father” who gives “good things” and the “Holy Spirit to those who ask him.” It was for Jesus.
Initiative: Be aware. Interact. Make your life and religion relationship.
Reflections brought to you by the Immersed in Christ Ministry
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