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Pentecost is traditionally called the “birthday of the Church.” Something definitely came to birth on that first Pentecost. What can we say about the Holy Spirit, especially as it relates to how we try to live our faith?

One of the things the Spirit did at Pentecost, and has not stopped doing ever since, is create intimacy. I remember being at Mass 30 years ago at the L’Arche community where I was spending a summer. The late Fr. Henri Nouwen was presiding Eucharist and speaking about intimacy in his homily. He later went on to write a book entitled, Intimacy. He defined intimacy as the ability to hold people just right, not too loosely and not too tightly. He used his hands to illustrate what he meant. 

Henri said that when we don’t live intimacy well, we can be like two hands, independent of each other, that never touch each other. When we live like that, it’s like we are indifferent to each other and to each other’s needs. It becomes a very self-serving world, where I look after myself, first and foremost, and expect you to fend for yourself. There is no intimacy in that world. When we find out this does not work, we attempt to draw closer to the other. 

But if we don’t know how intimacy works, we may over-compensate and smother the other person. Henri Nouwen illustrated this by bringing his two hands closer and closer until they locked together. This is an unhealthy form of clinging. Remember how the Risen Lord said to Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb, “Do not cling to me, Mary, for I have not yet ascended to my father and your father”. This clearly is not intimacy as one person usually ends up suffocating the other and maybe even controlling the other with questions like: where you going? Who are you meeting up with? When are you coming back? This stifles a good relationship and at some point the two people just need to pull apart, otherwise they can’t breathe anymore. Because they are so tightly clenched, when the hands pull apart there’s actually friction in the knuckles. Then he illustrated what healthy intimacy is by bringing his two hands together. They touch just at the finger tips. The hands can move close together or move apart when needed without any friction. When the hands move apart, while still touching at the finger tips, there is created a space for others to freely enter and freely exit. That’s intimacy; that’s knowing how to hold people just right. 

The Holy Spirit, promised and given by Jesus, is the Spirit of intimacy. The Spirit is God’s way of holding us just right, and it is the Spirit that teaches us how to do the same in our human relationships. Jesus’ departure at the Ascension was not a leaving as much as it was the means for a greater closeness, the necessary step for a greater intimacy. Jesus knew that he could be closer to us in his spirit than he could ever be in his flesh. That is both true of Jesus and of anyone who has ever left us in death. 

Besides being a Spirit of intimacy, a second thing we know about the Spirit is that when we experience the Spirit, we naturally feel inspired. We feel stirred, roused, moved, encouraged and more alive. We want to push into the world or into a project with enthusiasm that wasn’t there before. As a kid growing up with a love for hockey, I lived in the best place in Canada. I lived in Aylmer (now called Gatineau), Quebec, just across the river from Ottawa. Because of its ideal location, my father would take us to see Junior A hockey games. I could watch Wayne Gretzky playing in Ottawa in the Ontario Hockey League and Mario Lemieux in Hull playing in the Quebec Hockey League. I had the best of both worlds at my finger tips. I had two of the three Junior A leagues in my backyard. If I went to a Junior A hockey game on a Friday night, I always felt inspired to play better on Saturday. That’s how inspiration works; like the Holy Spirit, it’s infectious. 

Many years ago, when reporters were interviewing the then recently retired president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, they asked him what gave him the courage to stand firm during the fall of communism in the former U.S.S.R. Interestingly, he credited the electrician from Poland, Lech Walesa, who started the downfall of communism there. When Walesa was interviewed and asked what inspired him, he said it was the civil rights movement in the United States led by Martin Luther King. When Martin Luther King was interviewed and asked what inspired him, he said it was the courage of one woman, Rosa Parks, who refused to move to the back of the bus. Is it too much of a stretch to say that a brave little woman in the South brought about the downfall of communism a half a world away? 

Maybe that first Pentecost wasn’t the big, spectacular event I imagined it to be. Maybe it was more low-keyed. Maybe it was more like a seed that was planted, a seed that refused to die, a seed that keeps bearing good fruit 2000 years later, in places a half a world away from that upper room in Jerusalem.

So, the Holy Spirit is an intimate reality and an inspiring reality. How else is the Spirit known in our world? The Spirit is known where peace is given a chance and where relationships are in the process of being restored. In the very moment you try to restore a relationship, you can be sure the Holy Spirit is at work in you. Peace and the restoration of relationships usually don’t happen under the guise of sensational events; they usually come about in small gestures of kindness and forgiveness. They usually come about when we realize relationships are more important than proving who was right and who was wrong. The first thing Jesus does, in his risen form, is to breathe peace and forgiveness into his disciples. As he exhales his Spirit, they inhale that very Spirit into themselves. He does not hold them to their sins but offer them a new start. It is a new offer, a new beginning, a restored relationship. It is like the world is beginning again. Jesus’ breathing out his peace is supposed to remind us of the Creation Story where God breathed into the dust of the earth and created out of the earth, human life. With Pentecost, the world is being reborn. 

So, the Spirit of the Risen Lord is a spirit of intimacy. It’s a spirit that inspires us, and it is a spirit that restores relationship to peace. These are not just attributes of the Holy Spirit; they are also the mission of the Church, you and me.  

Fr. Phil Mulligan