Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth. O, God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations, Through Christ Our Lord, Amen.

So many gatherings at which Scripture is shared begin with these words of prayer. In our First Reading on this Sunday [Act 2:1-11], it is such a day. It's Pentecost, the great day of the Holy Spirit! As we will hear, wonderful things began to happen with the coming of the Holy Spirit. The Apostles were empowered like never before [cf. Acts 2:4]; the faith quickly spread, first through Jerusalem, then in time throughout the whole Roman Empire.

The Holy Spirit was mostly spoken about in Luke's Gospel. Images of doves and tongues of fire abounded. But for quite a few years, there was very little understanding of the Holy Spirit. Most people's attention in those early years was on trying to reconcile the humanity and divinity of Christ, known as the Father-Son paradox.

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen was once asked: "if God the Father is the Creator and Jesus is the Redeemer, what's the main role of the Holy Spirit?" The bishop replied: "that's easy, the Holy Spirt is the Champion of Truth. When there is an active devotion to the Holy Spirit, when the Holy Spirt is turned to for truth, great things happen; when such devotion wanes, things seem to fall apart."

For example, by the early 1200s, devotion to the Holy Spirit had been in great decline and many illnesses, including the plague, were sweeping Europe. At the prompting of Pope Albert the Great, there was a reawakening of devotion to the Holy Spirit and soon the first Catholic hospitals began and the plague was overcome.

Bishop Sheen went on to say in one of his television broadcasts in 1974 that "the world is entering the fourth great decline in devotion to the Holy Spirit and morality is collapsing right along with it." [1]

That was 1974, today we know it's even worse as the truths of abortion, marriage, gender, and identity have all been thrown into confusion. We are in desperate need of the Champion of Truth.

But it's easy to get discouraged these days, "It's all so much bigger than I am, what can I do?" Well, a number of saints have asked that same question; and they turned to a deep devotion to the Holy Spirit. In particular there's St Maximillian Kolbe in the 1940s. And he encouraged many others to begin each day in deep contemplation of the Holy Spirit. This later contributed to the restoration of permanent deacons in 1964.

St. Kolbe and several other saints made a very important point. As human beings, we have relationships with persons. So, to have a close personal relationship with the Holy Spirit it can be helpful if we "see" the Holy Spirit, not as some divine influence, or a dove or tongues of fire but as a person - just as God the Father is a person and Jesus is a person. The Holy Spirit is every bit a person - the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity.

History has shown that renewed devotion to the Holy Spirit has turned things around in the world when things seemed at the time to be hopeless; "For, nothing is impossible for God" [Lk 1:37]. Yes, there is something each one of us can do - begin each day in contemplation of the Holy Spirit. Let the Champion of Truth enter into our thoughts and understanding of the world and let that understanding influence those around us. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, each one of us can "do our part" in reintroducing truth into the confused thinking of our times.

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