6-7-22 - The Holy Translator

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here. 

If we set out to build a profile of the Holy Spirit, we would do well to attend closely to the things Jesus said about him before he took his leave of his disciples. We might learn, for instance, that the Holy Spirit functions as a sort of spokesperson for the Godhead, aka the Holy Trinity:

“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”

More than once, Jesus says that it is God the Father whose Word matters – who uttered a Word that became flesh in the Son, a Word that creates worlds and holy occasions through the Spirit. The Spirit gives voice to what the Father says – and declares what the Father purposes, “the things that are to come.”

When we hear the voice of God, then, it is the Spirit we are hearing. And when God hears our voice, it is the voice of the Spirit. “… that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words,” Paul told the Christians in Rome, adding that the Spirit intercedes for us. (Romans 8)

What a way to think of the Spirit, as a divine translator facilitating the communication between us and God. We don’t need to pray on our own, or be prophetic on our own; in fact, we cannot. The Spirit does that in us, as we invite God’s Life into our lives.

What if we too were able to cultivate that practice – not to speak on our own, but to speak only what we hear from God? How might our churches, our relationships, our lives be affected by inviting the Spirit to speak to us and through us, not speaking unless we felt it was God’s word? I wonder if I could do it for an hour, let alone a day.

We can start by being more aware of the Spirit’s function as communications intermediary, taking the thoughts we have on our wavelength, and interpreting them into the heavenly realms; and taking God’s thoughts – which are on a spectrum virtually impossible for us to comprehend – and articulating them in us. Just asking to receive the translation is a prayer I believe God will answer.

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