The SPIRIT speaks in our lives.

God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Romans 5.5

The story of God’s love for us begins with creation and continues in Jesus. But God is more than the Creator, ancient, infinite, and beyond us. God is more than the Son who became one of us in Jesus in order that we might become one with God. God is also Spirit, continuously present within us and around us, at work urging us to build community, to push back boundaries, make friends of enemies.

The Spirit inspires, prompts, urges, drives, and impels us from within and calls, challenges, excites us from outside ourselves. The Spirit is the giver of our lives today. The Spirit moves in experiences of grief and outrage, of success and joy. The Spirit speaks to us within our deepest selves and summons us to risk going out and beyond ourselves in friendship, love, and community.

The Holy Spirit coexists with our spirit. Our human spirit can help us recognize and respond to the nudging of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

What is spirit? The word means to breathe or move like wind. Breathing is what animates or gives life to physical beings. The air we breathe that fuels our blood with oxygen is invisible. In one of the Old Testament creation stories, Creator God shapes mud into a human form and breathes the breath of life into the nose. As a result, the human — in Hebrew, the adam — becomes a living being (Genesis 2.7).

At Pentecost the Spirit comes upon Jesus’ followers as wind and sets their tongues on fire with the good news of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.

Spirit is also a word that we use to name our tendencies and moods. A person with high spirits is exciting, energetic, and unstoppable. A person or group that is dispirited has a low morale and little enthusiasm. A person or even a group or class might be mean-spirited, looking to get even or cause trouble.

Students live and breathe school spirit as they do air. Like air that is sometimes light and sometimes full of dust or pollutants, school spirit rises and falls in a student body. Elections for class officers or student councils usually elevates it. Sports playoffs stir it up. The marching band displays it. School colors, emblems, and letter jackets identify belonging. Exam week creates a wide-spread spirit of anxiety and prayer.

Spirit also describes the intelligent or knowing characteristic of human beings. My human spirit knows my past and dreams my future. It is a word close to meaning my deepest and best self.

The spiritual practices among Jesuit priests, the followers of St. Ignatius, include discerning spirits. This discerning means weighing our feelings and dreams, sorting out our selfish and unselfish motives, testing dreams against Jesus’ teaching in the gospels. To discern is to judge, to decide which courses of action give life and which destroy or erode our best selves.

The word spirit names what lasts in a person. Her opponents burned Joan of Arc at the stake but her courageous spirit survived the ashes. She is a saint and heroine to us today.

Archbishop Oscar Romero knew that his preaching to end the violence in El Salvador made enemies. He reflected that if he was killed his spirit would rise in the Salvadoran people. He was killed while celebrating Eucharist but lives as a hero saint of the people today.

In the Nicene Creed, we call the Holy Spirit “the giver of life.” The Holy Spirit is with us not only when we are morally good but in every moment of our lives — in our sorrow and moments of awe, in our breakups and breakthroughs, in anger at injustice and delight in sharing.

The Spirit, being the Spirit of love and communion within the Trinity, desires to break down walls and boundaries among us. The Spirit moves in us and acts through us to break stereotypes and to see one another in God’s image as equals. The human person is sacred, alive in the Spirit.

The Spirit moves and speaks in such experiences as those in the list below. Describe to a partner a time you have experienced the Holy Spirit.