Baptism in the Holy Spirit

I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit (Mark 1:8).

 

As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.  And a voice came from heaven: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased."

 

It is amazing to me that I grew up hearing these 2 passages read in church, but somehow never connected either of them with my own life.  Would not you think that if someone said to you, "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit," you would investigate what that meant?

 

Maybe because we were baptized as infants, we thought we had already received the Holy Spirit and that was the end of that.  And of course, we never expect to hear a voice from heaven speaking to us, even if we are baptized as adults.  And yet, if as adult Christians, we belong to Christ and we are IN CHRIST, we should expect to experience what He experienced in the flesh.  He takes on our life that we might take on His life, especially in its relationship to the Father and to the Holy Spirit.

 

John said, "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit," and Luke adds, "and with fire."  If we have not yet experienced the fire, we may indeed "have" the Holy Spirit, but He does not yet "have" us.  Years ago, a someone I had met only briefly called me out of the blue.  "I don't know why I think you might have the answer to this," she said to me, "but I feel like a numb, dumb Catholic.  I go to church every Sunday, and sometimes the priest fusses about people coming in late, and I want to stand up and say, 'Father, if there were something to be here for, we'd be on time!'  Do you know what I'm missing?"

 

Actually, I did know what she was missing.  Our faith was never supposed to be "numb' and 'dumb,' in her words.  If we look at the Acts of the Apostles, we find fire, the "fire" that Jesus came to cast upon the earth.  We find the Holy Spirit at work on every page, and there was nothing boring about anyone's faith.  In fact, we get the picture of the Apostles hanging on to the Holy Spirit's coattails.  There are no organizational meetings (although there was the first Council of Jerusalem), no "planning sessions."  Rather, we find the early Christians meeting daily in the Temple area, praising God; we find numbers being added daily to the group; and we find the Apostles going about doing the works of Jesus. 

 

If we find our religion boring, non-exciting, maybe it's time to ask for the "Baptism in the Holy Spirit," the one that Jesus promised to His followers as "The Gift of the Father."  I once had a friend who said, "If God is handing out gifts, I'm standing in line!"  That should be our attitude every day:  "Whatever You're giving out today, don't leave me out!"

 

God the Father wants to bestow on us the Gift of the Holy Spirit.  It is the Spirit of His only Son, Jesus, and He wants to fill the entire world with that Gift.  If we and others do not know that we are His beloved children, in whom He is well pleased, we cannot tell others about the Gift of the Father.  If we are not filled with the Spirit of God, we cannot tell anyone about the love of the Father given to us in the Son. 

 

In two of the Gospels, Jesus tells us specifically to ASK for the Gift of the Spirit (Matthew 7 and Luke 11):  Seek and you shall find; knock and the door will be opened....everyone who asks receives.....  Jesus died in the flesh that we might live in His Spirit.  He wants us to know His internal life of fellowship with the Father and with the Spirit.  He wants us to enter even now into the eternal life of the Trinity. 

 

What is it that keeps us from knocking at that door, seeking the Holy Spirit, and asking the Father for the Gift He wants to bestow on us?  Is it fear that if we ask and don't receive, we will be too disappointed?  Is it a lack of faith that Jesus meant what He said?  Faith is believing and acting on what God has said.  And of all the things we are to act on, this is surely the easiest of all:  seek, knock, ask.

 

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.  "Baptize" means to immerse completely, to "dye," to "soak thoroughly."  If we have not been entirely soaked in the Holy Spirit, something still remains for us.  Let us not be afraid to ask for this baptism and to continue asking until we receive the Gift of the Father.

Does God Speak to Us Today?

The religion of the ancient Hebrews was based upon the belief that God can and does speak to man (John McKenzie, S.J. : The Two-Edged Sword, p. 22).

 

There are 400 years between the Testaments when "no prophet had arisen in Israel," when both the common people and the leaders were awaiting once again "The Word of the Lord."  Malachi was the last prophet before Jesus to speak in the Name of the Lord, and we can date that scroll to around 460 BCE, dealing with the problems of the people returning from captivity in Babylon.  Judah was still subject to Persia, even though they had been permitted to return to their own land by Cyrus.  Now they had to re-establish their government and to formulate laws to govern both civil and religious conduct.  Malachi was the last Old Testament prophet to give guidance to Israel in the Name of the Lord.

 

When Ezra returned to Jerusalem from Babylon, he brought with him the "book of the law of the Lord," but he did not receive the "Word of the Lord" as had the prophets before him.  Four hundred years after the exile (587-536), during the time of the Maccabees, Judas Maccabee and his sons seem sadly aware that the age of prophecy had past.  Not knowing what to do with the stones of the altar that had been polluted, they put them away until a prophet should come to tell them what to do.

 

Many people today would maintain that the age of prophecy has past, that God no longer speaks to His people, that we have no more prophets.  The book of Hebrews tells us, though, that "in these last days, God has spoken to us by His Son....[Who] is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by His powerful word."  His words are recorded in the New Testament for us, but it still takes a "living Word" from the Holy Spirit to breathe life into the Book -- to make it come alive for us.

 

If what we do matters to God, He must still speak to us through the Holy Spirit.  In fact, Jesus promised that the Spirit, when He comes, would lead us into all truth. Surely, that means that the Spirit continues to breathe wisdom and knowledge into the Body of Christ.

 

Someone once said, "Every child has the right to know what his father expects of him."  We do not often recognize the voice of God speaking to us, for it often sounds like our own voice or the voice of our parents.  But if we cultivate the time and space we need to still our own voice, we will hear God speaking in our hearts.

 

Scripture is the starting place -- we need to eat and digest the words of Jesus, but it takes the Holy Spirit "breathing" into the words on the page to show us which Scripture is meant for us at that moment.  In the wilderness, Satan quoted Psalm 191, but Jesus countered with a word from Deuteronomy.  Even our reading of Scripture must be directed by the Holy Spirit. 

 

Jesus said, "My sheep know My Voice...."  Surely that means He is still speaking to us from within.  Open our ears, Lord, to hear Your Voice!