During the past two weeks, the Church has been working its way through Jesus’ last words to his disciples in John 16 and 17. Christ is giving the disciples his own form of his last message to his friends and it is meant to be a reminder of how they can access his heart. It is truly about glory and his Spirit. The Spirit and the glory of the Lord are how we feel the weight of his life on our souls.
The “glory of the Lord” is an important element found throughout the Old Testament and it is taken up as a major genre in the Gospel of John. “We saw his glory,” (John 1:14) references the fact that Israel came into contact with God throughout its history, and now Yahweh is taking flesh. God’s “glory” is the appearance of God’s amazing presence that can be experienced by humans through their senses. The Dictionary of Biblical Theology notes that the Hebrew word for “glory” is kabod which is directly linked to a similar verb used to describe the action of “heaping weight on to something.”
This is why the Church explains the Holy Spirit as being “poured” out on us at our Baptism and at our Confirmation. The Spirit is thrown upon us and given to us as the way to experience God in the very core of our being.
Jesus takes up the message of glory in his life and teachings, and Christ is the true personification of the Father’s amazing presence. He is the weight of God’s glory. The Father’s love and defining purpose is revealed at Golgotha: the weight of his love is heaped upon the world at the moment when his spirit expires.
Prior to his death, in his farewell discourse, Christ promised his disciples and future followers that they will be filled with God’s glory through the power of the Holy Spirit. This occurred at Pentecost, the moment in time when the Holy Spirit comes down upon the Apostles, and transforms them.
Defining the Holy Spirit as God’s glory revealed to humanity is a critical way for us to experience Christ as a real living person At Pentecost we are told that, “tongues as of fire…came to rest on each one of them” (Acts 2:3). Fire gives off heat and light which accomplishes contact with the senses. Jesus states that the main purpose of the Holy Spirit is to enable the disciples, and us, to realize that, “you are in me and I am in you” (John 14:20).
Here, we reach the climax, the pinnacle of the Holy Spirit’s role and effect on the Christian. The Advocate comes so that we can become more attentive to recognizing that Jesus Christ resides within us and that this divine life inside of us is what ought to be the foundation of our prayer lives and our actions with others.
Contact with the fire of the Holy Spirit and the glory of God always renews us because it is the weight of his love that we experience through it. It is often when we need God the most, like the disciple did in the upper room, when he seeks to place the weight of His Spirit on us. This Pentecost is a reminder that Jesus desires for us to truly experience him like these disciples did.
To facilitate an encounter like this requires several things. First, we must make the time to receive him. Making a commitment to daily and intimate prayer is a necessary habit that makes our hearts available to the movements of the Holy Spirit. Second, we must be open to receiving God. We must be truly and radically receptive to the fact that we can powerfully receive Him when we enter into prayer.
Openness is tied to the final necessity of receiving the weight of God’s glory in prayer. We must have a deep trust that He can and will show up. Too often, we might convince ourselves that prayer is a reciting of words or a simple gesture to allocate time devoted to God. It can seem like we are simply attending a daily spiritual visit to the gym. Jesus wants more than that. He desires for us to truly trust him. That he can move us deeply and that he can heap the weight of his love upon us at any moment. Having a deep trust that he will break through with wind, fire, and his love makes us most attuned to his glory crashing into the room. So, this Pentecost – settle on a promise to spend more time with Him each day. Be open and completely trust that Jesus will break into your life, if you let him. And then patiently wait for the weight of his glorious Spirit to fall upon you. Because he desires for each of us to have our own Pentecost.
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