Fr. Frank Majka, SJ – The Bridge

Spirit Talk (a thought for Pentecost)

I don’t believe in ghosts but I do believe in spirits. Or, rather, one particular spirit: the Holy Spirit. All Christians who share the Athanasian creed (the one Catholics say at Mass) declare that they believe in the Holy Spirit, the “Lord and giver of life” who “together with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified.”

Ghosts may come to frighten or make mischief, but the Spirit comes in all times, to all peoples, to all cultures and faiths, to bring life, reconciliation, peace, and truth. The coming can be as dramatic as a wind storm or as intimate as a person’s own breathing.

And though the Spirit moves with sovereign freedom, the Spirit is never far away for, as the Jesuit poet Hopkins wrote, the Spirit “over the bent world broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”