Christ completed his work of Salvation on earth when he ascended into heaven. If such was the case, we should ask ourselves a very obvious question: why do we need Pentecost? Or more specifically, why do we need the Holy Spirit dwelling in our souls if Christ has already completed the work of Salvation? The answer, it turns out, is simple. We need the Holy Spirit to become children of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During his earthly ministry \u2013 and specifically during his Death and Resurrection \u2013 Jesus was not only restoring human nature to its pristine original state, but was also elevating human nature above its original state so that it could participate in the blessed life of the Holy Trinity. In other words, Jesus was giving human nature a \u2018software update\u2019 so that it could become fully compatible with God. If Jesus\u2019 earthly life, therefore, represents the \u2018software development\u2019 stage of this process, Pentecost represents the stage where this divine \u2018software\u2019 is downloaded personally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We, therefore, need the Holy Spirit dwelling in our souls because we need to be personally wired for God. It is not good enough if God has restored and elevated human nature in the abstract. Rather, He must restore your<\/em> human nature; his Holy Spirit needs to be \u2018downloaded\u2019 into your<\/em> soul. And that is what Pentecost represents: the descent of the Holy Spirit into the soul of the individual believer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What, then, does the Holy Spirit accomplish once it is dwelling within us? If we think of the natural world, each living thing has a principle of life, or what medieval philosophers called anima<\/em> \u2013 that is, spirit. This anima<\/em>, then, animates a living thing, gives it life and bestows upon it a nature. On a supernatural level, the situation is similar. The Holy Spirit \u2013 the divina<\/em> anima<\/em> \u2013 enters into our soul, gives us a supernatural principle of life and gives us a supernatural nature. This supernatural nature, of course, is divine sonship. That is, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we become children of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why, then, do we need Pentecost? We need Pentecost so that we might cry out to God, \u201cAbba, Father!\u201d During this Feast of Pentecost, let us pray that the Holy Spirit would descend upon us once again, so that we might call out to God with the renewed love of children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ian Mahood<\/strong> \u2013 St. Joseph Seminary, Edmonton, Alberta<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fot. Nowshad Arefin\/Unsplash.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pentecost Sunday<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,17,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-strona-glowna-najnowsze","category-strona-glowna-slider"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n