The Third Glorious Mystery: The Descent of the Holy Spirit

The following is the fifth of twenty monthly reflections about the Mysteries of the Rosary as they relate to family life.  The mysteries will not be necessarily chronological but presented as they interact with the liturgical year.

            One quite enjoyable aspect of being a parent has been watching my children develop their language skills.  Such a remarkable transformation takes place from when my wife and I were so excited to hear “Dada” or “Mama” to the point of listening to our kids put together sentences and tell us whole stories.  Recently, after my nearly 5 year-old son had done something regrettable, I was trying to explain to him the idea of having a conscience and that it would help him tell right from wrong.  He then told me, “Daddy, sometimes, when I do bad things, it’s because my bad brain tells me to do it.  I try not to listen to my bad brain, but it’s hard sometimes.”  Now, I have absolutely no idea where he came up with the phrase “bad brain,” but it was both hilarious and illustrative of part of our human condition.  Not only was my son learning language, he was awakening to deeper truths and mysteries of God, life, and relationship, even at his young age.  Of course, compared to God’s intellect, ours will always be like that of a little child’s.  Yet, as we see in this month’s mystery of the rosary, there are sometimes moments of enlightenment that lead us to greater understanding.

            As the apostles gathered shortly before the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, they were in a state of contradiction.  Though certainly excited about the events of recent days with Jesus’ resurrected return, they remained out of contact with the wider community.  Praying together in that room, not even the momentous event of Jesus’ rising was enough to spur them onward to spread the Good News to others.

This is not unlike our own lives of faith at times.  We are grateful for God’s many graces and blessings, but we are not always sure what to do with them.  Sometimes going about the busy nature of our lives can keep us from always asking the important questions of God’s will for us.  Even when we, like the apostles, spend time praying for guidance, we do not always receive timely answers.  Instead, we are waiting for the Spirit to move.

The hope and promise of Pentecost is that the Holy Spirit will indeed move.  We can imagine the scene that day: the strong driving wind, the tongues of fire, the doors bursting open, the apostles readily distributing themselves among the people and telling them, in their many native languages, of the wonders of God manifested in the person of Jesus.  It is a truly remarkable event and a culmination, in a sense, of what Jesus came to do.  He had gathered this ragtag bunch only a few years before, and they had followed him since then.  Sometimes they had been faithful, but they also were prone to confusion, pettiness, and a limited vision of Jesus’ mission on earth.  It is only with the rushing in of the Holy Spirit that the evangelized become the evangelizers.  Those who had known and followed the Word of God for three years were finally able to use words to preach courageously about him.

As we reflect on the moments of our faith journey, we find ourselves at different times on various parts of the spectrum.  Like children learning a language, we begin with babbling, move to words, string those words together, and occasionally utter something coherent and profound.  The important thing to remember is that we never act alone.  The Holy Spirit continues to live and move in our time, and if we open ourselves to this direction, it can lead to moments of clarity, of doors bursting open as we rush to do the will of God.  As long as we listen to the Spirit and not our “bad brain,” we will know exactly what to do!