This year Christians all over the world celebrate the festival of Pentecost on Sunday, 17 May. The central focus of all Christian prayers and worship today is the invocation of the Holy Spirit to come to renew the lives of the worshippers and, indeed, the renewal of the world of people at large. This day is regarded as the birthday of the Church. The second chapter of the New Testament book of ‘The Acts of the Apostles’ provides a historical description of Pentecost. 

The Holy Spirit came upon the first prayerful followers of Christ giving them a unique spiritual experience for a new vision and mission. The disciples received divine power to work miracles and were engaged in their mission of preaching the Gospel of salvation from sin. Theirs was the call to people to repent for sinful life. All God’s revelations, his work is done in his Spirit. The miraculous birth of Jesus and all his miracles, and his glorious resurrection were all done in the power of the Holy Spirit. Divine Spirit invades the sin-sick and corrupt world of all fleshly desires that negate authentic life and frustrate the goodwill of man.

Christ gave his followers his Spirit and his life-transforming Word. The mission is to bring about change in lives: from hatred to love, from jealousy to piety, from corruption to renewal, from pain to joy, and from hatred to healing. That is how the Church came into being and the disciples spread around Christ’s message in the power of the Spirit. The Spirit changed the lifestyle the Apostolic community altogether into a community of sharing with and caring for others in the spirit of selfless love. 

The person of the Holy Spirit is God’s Spirit. God is Spirit. He is opposed to those of the fleshly or carnal mind, lust and greed. We see this clearly mentioned in the Epistle to the Galatians. St. Paul wrote to them: “The works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing and the like”; “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…”(Galatians 5:19, 22). 

Ideally, the Holy Spirit dwells in our bodies and hearts and empowers us to do good in God’s work of justice and peace. Believers need to acknowledge their weakness in their fight against the desires of the flesh. Holy Spirit guides us for the welfare of our total personality: body, mind and soul, which in turn compels us to rise above all narrowness and depravity so that we can devote our lives to loving service and care for the weak, and the needy. We should do our best to contribute to the purpose of creating an atmosphere of justice, peace and harmony among people everywhere irrespective of any creed, caste, status, color race, or any other man-made distinction. Let us see people just as people.