BREATH OF LIFE
The Hebrew culture came up with a very beautiful and real idea of the mystery of life. Thus does an old story describe the creation of the first man, many centuries before Christ: «The Lord God shaped man from the soil of the ground and blew the breath of life into his nostrils, and man became a living being».
It’s what experience tells us. The human being is soil. At any moment he can fall apart. How to walk with feet of clay? How to see life with eyes of soil? How to love with a heart of dirt? Yet this clay lives! In our interior there’s a breath that makes us live. It’s the Breath of God. God’s life-giving Spirit.
At the end of his Gospel, John has described a grandiose scene. It’s the culminating moment of the Risen Jesus. According to the account, the birth of the Church is a «new creation». When he sends forth his disciples, Jesus «breaths on them and says: Receive the Holy Spirit».
Without Jesus’ Spirit, the Church is clay without life: a community incapable of introducing hope, comfort and life into the world. She can pronounce sublime words without communicating God’s breath to people’s hearts. She can speak securely and firmly without strengthening people’s faith. Where will we get hope from, if it’s not from Jesus’ breath? How are we going to defend ourselves from death without the Spirit of the Risen One?
Without the creating Spirit of Jesus, we can end up living in a Church that is just about renewal: she’s not allowed to dream of great novelties; what’s most safe is a static and controlled religion, that changes as little as possible; what we’ve received from other times is also the best for us; our generation should celebrate our wavering faith with the language and rites of centuries past. The paths are marked out. You don’t need to ask yourselves why.
How to not shout out with force: «Come, Holy Spirit! Come to your Church. Come to free us from fear, mediocrity and the lack of faith in your creative force?» We don’t need to look to others. Each one of us needs to open up our own heart.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
