“PEACE be to you. As the Father hath sent me, I also send you. When he had said this, he breathed on them; and he said to them: Receive ye the Holy Spirit.” (Jn 20,21-22)
Though addressed to his apostles, these words can also be addressed to all of us who want to follow Christ. After all, we have to realize that if we really want to be Christ’s followers, we cannot help but also be his apostles, sent to the whole world, and enabled by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The intimate connection between the apostles and us with Christ can be gleaned from what Christ said one time: “He who hears you hears Me, he who rejects you rejects Me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent Me.” (Lk 10,16)
And all this is made possible precisely because we have been given the Holy Spirit who makes Christ alive in us. And just as Christ was sent by the Father to carry out the salvation of mankind, so should we also realize that we too are sent for the same purpose. In short, we have the same mission as Christ’s.
We have to feel very much at home with this very wonderful reality and start to correspond to it as we ought. We have to go beyond our earthly dimensions and enter into the more fascinating world of the spiritual and the supernatural.
This does not mean that we escape from our earthly reality to be in the spiritual and supernatural reality. No. It means that while deeply immersed in our mundane conditions, we also have to learn to go beyond them to be with God. This is what the word ‘transcendence’ means.
To be sure, we are enabled to do that, because of our intelligence and will. These are powerful faculties that would enable us to know and to love, and eventually to enter in the lives of others and ultimately to be with God.
But more importantly, we are always given the grace so that our capacity to be with God and carry out his work in the world is actualized. It’s not enough that we are enabled to know and love God. That potency has to be put into act with the grace of God who gives it to us in abundance.
We have to do our part, of course. And the first thing to do is to be aware that there is such a reality as developing a life in the Spirit, and from there start cultivating the proper attitudes, skills and virtues.
This may look like a daunting, overwhelming task, but it can always be done. Sure, there will be difficult, awkward moments, but those usually happen in the beginning of the learning curve. As long as we persist, time will come when living in intimate relationship with the Spirit becomes second nature to us.
We need to spread this Good News more widely, because many of us are still completely ignorant of it. And of those who may already know about it, a lot of confusion, doubts and misunderstanding abound.
But more than spreading the Good News, we need a lot of teachers and models who can clearly show how this life in the Spirit can be achieved. Let’s hope that we can count on many people, especially those who are already active in the Church, to serve as teachers and models for this purpose.
