How is your relationship with the Holy Spirit?

Is the Holy Spirit a stranger or an impenetrable force? Or he is a friend and a person to love?

The feast of Pentecost gives us a unique opportunity to reflect on our own relationship with the Holy Spirit. Of the three persons of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit is often the least understood.

St. Josemaria Escriva in a homily titled “The Great Unknown” ponders this mystery and challenges Christians to examine their relationship with the Holy Spirit.

He writes,

And so we can apply to ourselves the question asked by the apostle: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” And we can understand it as an invitation to deal with God in a more personal and direct manner.

Escriva continues, “For some, unfortunately, the Paraclete is the Great Stranger, the Great Unknown. He is merely a name that is mentioned, but not Someone, not one of the three Persons (in the one God) with whom we can talk and with whose life we can live.”

Of course, the Trinity is one of the greatest mysteries of Christianity. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, “We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons, the ‘consubstantial Trinity'” (CCC 253).

Furthermore,

The divine persons are really distinct from one another. “God is one but not solitary.” “Father,” “Son,” “Holy Spirit” are not simply names designating modalities of the divine being, for they are really distinct from one another.

This profound mystery means that we can develop our own relationship with the person of the Holy Spirit and invoke his particular aid in our everyday life. He is not a “stranger” or some sort of impenetrable force, but a person we can love.

It’s not an easy concept to wrap our human minds around, but it is a truth of our faith, something that we should ponder as we celebrate the feast of Pentecost.

Ask yourself, “How do I view the Holy Spirit? What role does he have in my life? Do I love the Holy Spirit?”