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Spirit

“Now let’s build a city with a tower that reaches the sky,
so that we can make a name for ourselves...” — Genesis 11:6

“I will pour out my Spirit on everyone. Your sons and daughters will proclaim my message; your young men will see visions, and your old men will have dreams” — Acts 2:17

Listening to the Spirits

In his letter to the Romans, Apostle Paul declared that the whole creation is groaning in travail in need of God’s salvation (cf. Romans 8:22). Human experience would show us that the whole of creation continuously groans and hopes for God’s saving act. To pray for the coming of the Holy Spirit to bring renewal and re-birth, we have to listen to the cries of creation and of the spirit within it.

We have to listen to the spirit of Hagar, an Egyptian, black slave woman, exploited and abandoned by Abraham and Sarah, the ancestors of our faith (cf. Gen. 21:15-24). Listen to the spirit of Uriah, a loyal soldier sent and killed in the battlefield by King David out of the king’s great desire for his wife Bathsheba (cf. 2 Sam. 11:1-27). Listen to the spirit of the male babies killed by the soldiers of King Herod upon Jesus’ birth (cf.Mt.2:16-18).

We have to listen to the spirit of the people who died during the holy crusades in the Dark Ages. Listen to the spirit of our forefathers and mothers who were victims of genocide during the time of colonialism and the period of the great Christian mission to the pagan world. Listen to the spirit of our fathers and mothers who were killed during the various wars in world history from the ancient times to the present.

We have to listen to the spirit of our brothers and sisters who died in their struggle for genuine freedom, justice, and peace in our own history as a people. Listen to the spirit of soldiers, rebels, and civilians alike who were killed in the continuing insurgency and counter-insurgency campaigns in our country.

We have to listen to the spirit of the earth, of the air and waters, the nature around us, exploited by human greed for money.

We have to listen to the spirit of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, tortured and killed on the cross.

Without listening to the cries of these spirits, we cannot hear the voice of God’s Holy Spirit who has become tangible and visible to us in many ways. Because of these spirits, we can feel, touch and taste the concrete bodily historical presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst. Thus, we can earnestly pray, “Come, Holy Spirit, renew your creation.”

God’s Presence

God’s Holy Spirit has always been with us from the very beginning. God has created us, and the whole universe, with God’s life-giving Spirit. God’s Spirit has enabled the Israelites to be freed from the bondage of Egypt, resurrected Christ from death, and started the church as a liberating community.

We also experience God’s life-giving Spirit in our people’s cry for life, and in the beauty and gifts of nature. God’s Holy Spirit has been teaching us through the survival wisdom of the poor, the screams of the grief-ridden spirits of suffering people, and the blessings and curses of nature.

Only when we could hear this cry for life, and could see the signs of liberation, are we able to recognize the Holy Spirit’s activity in the midst of the whole creation groaning in travail.

The Evil Spirit

However, what we see in today’s world are signs of death. The evil spirit of the Tower of Babel, a spirit of acquisitiveness and division (cf. Gen.11:1-9), is alienating us from each other and from God’s life-giving Spirit.

The Story of the Tower of Babel is the story of human greed without limit. This tower of greed divides people. People talk to each other, but no longer understand each other. Being imprisoned in their own greed at the expense of others, people have lost the ability to feel with each other.

Jesus Christ our Lord once called this greedy spirit of acquisitiveness as Mammon. He said, “No one can save two masters…You cannot serve God and Mammon”(Mt.6:24). Mammon exploits, breaks, and kills people in order to possess more wealth. This madness for possession divides human communities and finally destroys our fragile earth.

This Mammon that divides people is active everywhere. It is found in the bloody conflicts and destructive wars between and among nations, in the exploitation of the world’s natural resources. It is shown even more concretely in Philippine political life and practice.

This is the same evil spirit that crucified Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Holy Spirit

The evil spirit of Mammon, however, cannot overcome God’s Holy Spirit. God does not abandon us to despair. God empowers us to choose life. When the Holy Spirit came upon the believers on the Day of Pentecost, God comforted their broken hearts and called them into discipleship (cf. Acts 2:1-9). Their nightmare of witnessing Jesus’ death turned into a vision of a new world. Mary’s weeping for his son Jesus turned into a foundation for building a new community for life.

When God’s life-giving Spirit descended upon the believers, they saw a vision of a new world, wherein “your sons and daughters will proclaim my message; your young men will see visions, and your old men will have dreams”(cf. Acts 2:17-18). God’s Spirit called them out of the culture of silence, of violence and death into a culture of speech - a language of their own.

The common language the people lost at the Tower of Babel was restored in a radically new way at Pentecost. Now, they can hear each other and understand one another, not with the language of the Roman Empire, but with the diversities of their own languages. Their language was a language of salvation, a language of liberation, and not of domination.

God’s Holy Spirit conquers the evil spirit of the Tower of Babel and all the divisions it has produced within us, among us, and around us. God’s Spirit, therefore, calls us to be passionate workers for a new creation.

Call to Action

What then should we do when God’s Holy Spirit calls us? The first thing we should do is to repent. Indeed, repentance is the first step to a truthful prayer for the coming of God’s Holy Spirit. But what should we repent about? Many things. But first of all, we should repent our hidden love for Mammon and our secret desire for the Tower of Babel.

In order to prepare the way for God’s Holy Spirit to dwell in us and among us, we need to be set free from the spell of the evil spirit of Mammon by emptying ourselves, so that God’s Holy Spirit of liberation and renewal will have a place in our lives. #

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