Monday of the
Seventh Week of Easter
(Acts 19:1-8; John 16:29-33)
The paintings of Alice Dalton Brown often depict the Holy
Spirit. They do not show birds or fire
but wind and water and sunlight. They
tell us that the Holy Spirit makes life delightful. They indicate how needy we would be without
the Spirit like the disciples whom St. Paul meets at Ephesus in today’s first
reading.
Often people consider Christian faith as dreary. They see some followers of Jesus as
joyless. They wonder if being a disciple
of Jesus is just about making costly sacrifices. Of course, they are wrong. They need to see that Christians have the
Holy Spirit who makes their lives eminently happy. In the reading when Paul imparts the Spirit,
the disciples’ joy is expressed in their becoming ecstatic. They immediately speak in strange voices like
mountain men yodeling.
We too have the Holy Spirit as our greatest gift. He is God Himself singing, as it were, within
us and radiating happiness. We know that
close to God, we are safe from all harm.
We will conquer even death itself.
