RENEW
US WITHIN
Little by little we’re learning to live without inner life. We no longer need to be in contact with the best that lies within us. It’s enough for us to keep busy. We’re happy with functioning without soul and feeding only on well-being. We don’t want to push ourselves to seek truth. Come, Holy Spirit, and free us from inner emptiness.
We’ve learned to live without roots and without goals. It’s enough for us to let ourselves be programmed from somewhere else. We move about and get excited endlessly, but we don’t know what we want or where we’re going. We’re better informed than ever, but we feel more lost than ever. Come, Holy Spirit, and free us from confusion.
We’re hardly interested in the great questions of life. We’re not worried about being left without light to confront life. We’ve become more skeptical, but also more fragile and insecure. We want to be smart and sharp. But we find no peace and quiet. Come, Holy Spirit, and free us from inner darkness and chaos.
We want to live more, live better, live longer, but live what? We want to feel good, feel better, but feel what? We seek to enjoy life intensely, to the last drop, but we aren’t happy with just having a good time. We do what we feel like. There are scarcely any bans or any limits. Why do we want something different? Come, Holy Spirit, and teach us to live.
We want to be free and independent and we find ourselves each time more alone. We need to live and we close ourselves into our own little world, sometime so bored. We need to feel ourselves loved and we don’t know how to create living and friendly contacts. We call sex «love», and pleasure «happiness», but who will quench our thirst? Come, Holy Spirit, and teach us to love.
In our life there’s no longer room for God. God’s presence has gotten repressed or stagnant inside us. Full of noise within, we can no longer hear God’s voice. Tossed about by thousands of desires and feelings, we can’t find our way to perceive God’s closeness. We know how to talk with everyone else but God. We’ve learned to live with our backs turned to the Mystery. Come, Holy Spirit, and teach us to believe.
Believers and nonbelievers, weak in faith and of bad faith, that’s how we journey all too often through life. In the Christian feast of the Holy Spirit, Jesus says to all of us what he said one day to his disciples, breathing over them: «Receive the Holy Spirit». That Spirit that sustains our poor lives and strengthens our weak faith can penetrate us and revive our existence through paths that he alone knows.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
