THE HEALING POWER OF THE SPIRIT
People today are accustomed to living without responding to the most vital question of their life: why and for what do I live. What’s serious is that when the person loses all contact with their own interior and mystery, life falls into triviality and senselessness.
One lives then by impressions, in the surface of things and events, unfolding only the appearance of life. Probably this trivialization of life is the most important root of the unbelief of all too many.
When a human being lives without interiority, she loses respect for life, for people and for things. But above all she becomes incapable of «listening» to the mystery that is contained in the deepest part of existence.
People today resist profundity. They are not disposed to take care of their inner life. But they start to feel unsatisfied: they figure out that they need something that regular life doesn’t offer them. In that dissatisfaction their salvation can start.
The great theologian Paul Tillich said that only the Spirit can help us to discover once again «the path of profundity». On the other hand, to sin against that Holy Spirit would be «to bear our sin forever».
The Spirit can awaken in us the desire to fight for something more noble and much better than the trivial of each day. It can give us the boldness needed to begin an inner work in ourselves.
The Spirit can make a different joy spring forth in our heart; it can bring to life our worn-out life; it can enflame love in us even toward those for whom we don’t feel the slightest interest at this moment.
The Spirit is «a power that acts in us and that isn’t ours». It’s the very God inspiring and transforming our lives. No one can say that they aren’t inhabited by that Spirit. What’s important is to not put it out, bring its fire to life, make it burn to purify and renew our life. Maybe we need to begin by invoking God with the Psalmist: «Do not take away from me your Spirit».
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
