Wait.  As Jesus was preparing for his ascension to the Father he gave the apostles a command that would begin their journey of building the Church and establishing the Kingdom of God, “Wait.”  Before they went running off to try to figure out on their own what they were to do and how they would preach the gospel to all nations the Apostles were instructed to wait first for the gift of the Holy Spirit to be poured out upon them.  Without the gift of the Holy Spirit of God the Apostles would have gotten it all terribly wrong.  They would have had good intentions and they were well equipped with their knowledge of the Father through their experience of life with Jesus the Christ but without the guidance of the Holy Spirit they would have failed in their mission to spread the gospel.  The “power” to accomplish the mission that Jesus had entrusted to them was not yet in them.  It was not their own personal and very human powers that they were to draw upon but rather the power of the Holy Spirit of God living within them, perfecting their love of God through an intimate and interior union with God in their souls and through an enlightenment of their understanding of what they knew about God.  Jesus did not want the Apostles to establish the Church through an impulse of their desires, acting impulsively on their experience of the passion of Jesus and his subsequent resurrection but rather he wanted the Church to be born, not out of impulse, but rather from inspiration and contemplation.  The Apostles were instructed to wait for the gifts of the Holy Spirit to be poured out upon them, breathed into them, so that, inspired by these gifts, they might be perfected in love and understanding, united in a oneness with God and truly accomplishing His work and glorifying Him, not themselves.

     The example that Jesus had given the Apostles was one of obedience and trust.  Every word that he shared with them was not his own word but was given to him by the Father.  Every work that he accomplished was not to glorify himself but to glorify God and reveal the Father’s love for the world.  Jesus was not working on his own but was always working with the Father and revealing the Father.  This was perfectly illustrated in his total prayer of abandonment to the Father in the garden of Gethsemane when he surrendered himself fully to the Father’s will, “not my will but yours be done.”  The Church is not a project that the Apostles decided to take upon themselves to honor the memory of Jesus but rather it is the work of God’s Spirit that is living in them and guiding them in love and truth.  The Church is born out of the love of the Father and the truth that He reveals through the Son and the Spirit.  The Roman Catholic Church is an extension of God’s will into the world, not the will of any human person or founder.  The perfect nature of the Church is the work of the Holy Spirit and thus our faith in the teaching and guidance of the Church arises from our faith in God and His inerrancy.

     The Holy Spirit works in our own lives of faith to purify us, perfect us and to lead us to the Father.  He works through the process of discernment and detachment.  Without the gifts of the Holy Spirit, without His purification of us we would certainly go astray and follow false gods and idols of our own creation.  Our journey to God must seek a perfect union of mind and will with God.  It means the total consecration and submission of all of our faculties to God’s Truth and to His Love.  Thomas Merton asserted that the whole spiritual life can be summed up in simply doing the will of God.  The Holy Spirit works in our intellect through “discernment” to lead us into the Truth, to enlighten our minds and help us to know and recognize what is true.  This Truth is one, it is objective, it is living and it can be known through reason and assented to through the will.  The Holy Spirit helps us in our hearts to perfect the will in Love through “detachment” from created, worldly things in order to love God alone and serve only Him.  It is not a blind faith that God asks but a reasonable service proper to beings endowed with freedom and with intelligence.  The Spirit that Jesus breathes on the Apostles leaves them with a gift of profound peace and yet, it also imparts a great power to transform the world for good.

     We thank God for the gifts of the Spirit, the gift of the Church that is born of the Spirit and the gift of reason and faith that are purified by the Spirit and that lead us so certainly to God and to our true and eternal life in Him.  Wait.  Wait for the Lord, for his Spirit, our gentle and peaceful guide, who has the power to gift us, guide us and perfect us in the way of new life.