The Holy Spirit is one of the most mysterious aspects of God. Many people have tried to explain who the Spirit is and although we can understand certain aspects of the Holy Spirit, it’s hard for us to fully comprehend this mystery, just as it is hard to fully explain the true nature of God. No matter how little we understand about the Holy Spirit, we can all be deeply impacted by the Spirit if we invite the Spirit into our lives.
While the Holy Spirit is difficult to explain, the Spirit gives us many gifts. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. These gifts help us, and others through us, to not only understand God better, but to also grow closer to Him. We gain access to these gifts through the Sacraments – especially Baptism and Confirmation. Baptism imbues us with the Holy Spirit and Confirmation ignites it and ramps it up within us. I’m sure we all can think of someone who passed through our lives and had at least one of the gifts listed above. We can use the power given to us through the Holy Spirit to help us to overcome the hard parts of life and be a beacon of light to the world.
Movies like The Exorcist show people getting possessed by demons. Although uncommon, possession is still a very real thing. The person possessed sometimes gains some power such as knowing facts about others that they shouldn’t know, having great strength, or levitation. If powers like these are gained from lesser demons who are trying to hurt us, just imagine the power we will get by inviting the Holy Spirit in our lives. Demons possess someone and take away some or all of their free will. The Holy Spirit never possesses us, but works along side of us to help us to grow to be a better version of ourself. The devil is all about offering things to us that we think are giving us more freedom, but in reality are actually taking away our freedom.
Let us all welcome the Holy Spirit into our lives and see how our lives are affected for the better over time. God created all of us to be beacons of light and to seek the warmth of God’s light. When we seek to primarily please ourselves over pleasing God, we stay in the darkness and will ultimately never be fulfilled. However, when we put our priorities in order and move towards the light of truth, we will find ourselves truly happy and basking in the arms of our Father.
