A poor European family was coming to the US early last century. On the ship, they had as food the bread and cheese they had purchased prior to sailing.
After many days of cheese sandwiches, the son came to his father, “Dad, if I have to eat cheese sandwiches all the way across the Atlantic, I won’t make it.” The sympathetic father gave him his last nickel for ice cream. Hours later the child returned. The father noticed his wide smile. He asked what he had eaten. “Several plates of ice cream, dad, and then a steak dinner.” “For a nickel?” “No, dad, the food is free. It’s part of the passage ticket.” He returned the coin to his father.
The filet mignon of the Holy Spirit came to us with the ticket of our Baptism and Confirmation. No one has to continue eating cheese sandwiches everyday. No doubt cheese will nourish us. However, we will die of boredom before cholesterol kills us.
We have listened to Christ’s command, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Each of us received the Holy Spirit at Baptism and Confirmation. The Spirit’s gifts are awesome. Listen to them: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. We must learn to use them. The Holy Spirit, says Daniel Durken, came to dispel the A,B,C, and Ds of our humdrum lives – apathy, boredom, coldness, and dullness.
When St Paul dropped in on Ephesus (Acts 19), he judged they were lacking a get up and go spirit. So he asked point-blank, “Have you received the Holy Spirit?” Why would he ask that, inquires Peter Kreeft, unless he observed a power shortage in their company? The Ephesus Christians were dragging themselves along on 60 volts when all the time they could have been charged with 120 volts. When they replied they had not received the Spirit, Paul confirmed them. They became supercharged people.
Why were the twelve, many of them illiterate, able to win a world for their Leader? And why are a billion Christians unable to repeat the same feat today? The answer is the Apostles used the Holy Spirit’s gifts to the full and we do not.
The Spirit’s gifts operate in our ordinary lives under extraordinary conditions. They kick in, as someone has said, as “unruly house guests.” People blossom to levels of wisdom or fortitude they never dreamed possible. During the French Revolution, an informer notified the Mother Superior of a Carmelite convent that the following day all the sisters would be guillotined. She told her nuns. She said that the convent gate would be left open for anyone who wished to flee. Only one ran away. The next morning the rest were brought to the guillotine. The sisters were about to place their heads on the block. Then they observed with pride that the nun who had run away stepped out of the crowd and joined her sisters. What had brought her back? It was the gift of fortitude from the Holy Spirit.
Benedict Groeschel writes the gifts of the Spirit were sewn into us like seeds. They remain in the desert of our souls waiting to be nourished and given life. The driest desert in the world, says Groeschel, is in Chile. One time the desert had not seen rain for sixteen years. Then the rains came. The result was the desert was marked with tiny enamel-like flowers. They were there all the time just waiting for proper growth conditions. As it was in Chile, so it is with each of our spirits.
The saddest young man I ever met was a fellow I encountered at a college. He was asked by a student who knew he was a devout Catholic at home, “Why don’t I see you at Sunday Mass?” The teen replied, “Would you want me to be the only one in my dorm to go?” The student had received the gift of fortitude from the Holy Spirit, but he was afraid to use it. Which will it be for us – steak or cheese sandwiches?
Will we recall the monk who preached that God the Father gave us His Spirit so that we might become like His Son?
A five year old pre-Communion child watched her mother receive the Eucharist. She asked, “Will you share Jesus with me?” Will we, helped by the Spirit, share Jesus with our friends? Napoleon Bonaparte said, “There are two forces on this earth, the force of arms and the force of the Spirit. The force of the Spirit is stronger.” Why don’t we prove that by our lives?