A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter
Readings: Acts 2:14a, 36-41 1 Peter 2:20b-25 John 10:1-10
One must be of a certain age and from a particularly rural area to appreciate how hard it once was to watch television. In the early decades of TV, there were no streaming services. If you wanted to watch a television show, you did so when it was broadcast, because there was also no way to record a show for later viewing. And cable television, with its promise of a steady signal, did not yet exist. You received the show over the airwaves through an antenna, either on the television set itself or upon your roof.
We were a two-hour drive from the nearest television stations in Wichita. CBS and NBC had rural boosters. ABC did not. That meant that watching “Batman,” “Bewitched,” “The Mod Squad,” “The Addams Family,” “The Flintstones”and my favorite “Lost in Space” was a precarious, static-snowy affair. You were constantly adjusting the antenna, if you could, to keep the screen and sound in focus.
Many of us presume that connecting to the Holy Spirit is similar. We are not as close as we should be, so transmissions are relatively infrequent and not easily received. Yet the truth is that we were created to be in sync with the Spirit, who constantly reveals himself to friends and foes alike, if they know how to listen.
In this regard, St. Ignatius of Loyola rewrote what it means to discern the Holy Spirit when he recognized that emotions are not spiritual static. You do not ignore your emotions to hear God. God speaks through them.
This is in sharp contrast to the ancient world, Christian and pre-Christian, which thought of emotions as something unstable, less evident and certainly less than rational. The ancients sought illumination by bracketing out emotions, concentrating instead on reasoned reflection.
The truth is that we were created to be in sync with the Spirit, who constantly reveals himself to friends and foes alike, if they know how to listen.
Ignatius’ insight, drawn from his personal experiences with emotional desolation and consolation, was that both God and the Evil Spirit speak through our positive and negative emotions, although how they do so is distinct and contrasting.
You can tell which spirit is speaking to you and can comprehend the message once you situate your emotions in their moral contexts. In his seventh rule on the discernment of spirits, Ignatius offers an illustration that captures his insight.
In the case of those going from good to better, the good angel touches the soul gently, lightly, and sweetly, like a drop of water going into a sponge. The evil spirit touches it sharply, with noise and disturbance, like a drop of water falling onto a stone.
If you are growing in God, you can expect the Holy Spirit to confirm that advancement with positive emotions. In contrast, the Evil Spirit will send unsettling feelings, aiming to slow down the progress.
However, to apply this rule to ourselves, we need to recognize that we are neither pure saint nor sinner, but some mixture of the two.
We begin by noting the context of a given emotion.
If this is an area of our life in which we follow the Lord rather well, we can expect the Spirit to send gentle, confirming emotions. For example, we feel good in performing an act of charity. It leaves us with a peaceful feeling. By way of contrast, it is then the Evil Spirit who suddenly hits us with a jarring emotion at such a time. The aim is to unsettle, to discourage. “What good am I doing? I will never make a difference.”
In those areas where we are coming close to God, we can expect the Spirit to encourage us. In those areas where we are drifting away, the Holy Spirit will try to jar us awake.
But what about a situation where discipleship is difficult? One where it takes everything you have not to give into temptation, not to tell someone off. You find it difficult to move forward. You yield to the evil. Here you can expect the Holy Spirit to unsettle you emotionally. He wants you to change your behavior. The Holy Spirit jars you. You feel awful about what you said, how you acted. In contrast, the Evil Spirit will be the one trying to comfort you. “He or she richly deserved that.”
The genius of Ignatius was to recognize that our emotions do speak to us. The Holy Spirit reveals himself to us by way of emotions, positive and negative. In those areas where we are coming close to God, we can expect the Spirit to encourage us. In those areas where we are drifting away, the Holy Spirit will try to jar us awake.
Of course, the Holy Spirit is not the only one speaking to us. But once you identify your basic direction in a given situation, either toward or away from God, you will know how to recognize whether the spirit speaking is holy or not.
These spirits touch souls in the opposite way. The reason for this is the fact that the disposition of the soul is either similar to or different from the respective spirits who are entering. When the soul is different, they enter with perceptible noise and are quickly noticed. When the soul is similar, they enter silently, like those going into their own house by an open door.
It is no longer a challenge to watch television. Indeed, with so many options, the challenge now is to stop once in a while. And when we watch, it is helpful to have others who can guide us, tell us what is worth our time. Most of us have learned whose recommendations we trust, and the Holy Spirit acts in this way as a guide to life.
Yet we might still compare the spiritual life to the early days of television. If you are quite distant from God and losing ground, the Holy Spirit will send emotional jolts in a disrupted field. If you are in tune with God, the emotions will be steady and peaceful.
