Jubilee: Gift of the Spirit by Fr. Milt Walsh

The Spirit descends on Jesus: All four Gospels describe the event of the Lord’s baptism in a similar way: we see Jesus emerging from the water, there is the sound of a voice from heaven, and the Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove.

The waters, the voice and the Spirit tell us that in the anointing of Jesus we are witnessing a new creation. The breath of God sweeps over the waters and the voice of God calls creation into being, with which He is well pleased.

For all the drama of the event, the Baptism of the Lord is marked by a hiddenness, an interiority. This is emphasized by what Jesus does next: He retires to the desert, "led by the Spirit," to pray and fast in solitude for forty days. Only then does He begin His public ministry. In the synagogue at Nazareth, he reads the text from the prophet Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord." (Lk 4:18-19)

This is the first proclamation of the Jubilee Year in the ministry of Jesus, a proclamation which He clearly links to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Him. From the humiliation of baptism -- which testifies to his association with sinners -- and his sojourn in the wilderness, Jesus returns to His hometown to proclaim, "Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing." (Lk 4:21)

As we turn from the Baptism of the Lord to St. Luke’s description of Pentecost, we find many similarities. Like Jesus, the disciples are absorbed in prayer; there is a sound from heaven, and an anointing with the Holy Spirit. The event is profoundly interior, it defies description, and yet it is marked with external manifestations. And just as the Spirit prompted Jesus to proclaim a new creation in the language of the prophet Isaiah, so we find Peter in his inaugural sermon quoting from the prophet Joel: "It will come to pass in the last days, God says, that I will pour out a portion of my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men will dream dreams." (Acts 2:17)  The Spirit bestowed on Jesus can now be given to every human being, to make of each of us a new creation.

The Spirit descends on Mary: Although the outpouring of the Spirit on Jesus marked the beginning of the Great Jubilee, it was prepared for by an earlier bestowal on Mary, His Mother. St. Luke tells us that she was gathered in prayer with the Twelve and the other disciples. Just as the Acts of the Apostles opens with the promise of an outpouring of divine power, so we find the same promise given to Mary at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel.

Even the language is the same: the Angel Gabriel tells Mary that the Holy Spirit will "come upon" her, and the risen Christ promises the disciples that the Holy Spirit will come upon them. St. Luke is the only evangelist to use this particular Greek word, and he usually employs it to describe some tragic event which catches a person off guard; but here he uses it to describe the unexpected, yet joyful, bestowal of the Spirit.

Both the Baptism of Jesus and Pentecost were primarily interior spiritual events, which led to the public proclamation of the fulfillment of God’s promise. This pattern is repeated in the Annunciation: immediately, Mary travels in haste to the aid of her cousin Elizabeth, and in her "Magnificat" she glorifies God for raising up the lowly and fulfilling His promises.

The Spirit descends on us: Pentecost is not an event tethered to the past: the same Holy Spirit who descended upon the first Christians continues to anoint the followers of Christ. The Apostles still receive the anointing of leadership in their successors; Mary continues to pray in the heart of the Church. This bestowal of the Spirit is first and foremost interior, since the Holy Spirit resides in the intimate recesses of our hearts. In our hours of personal prayer and communion with God in the Spirit, we are with those disciples at prayer in the Upper Room, with Jesus in the desert, with Mary in the village of Nazareth. This is why Pope John Paul has compared these years leading up to the Jubilee as a kind of Advent, in which Christ takes shape in the secrecy of our hearts as He once did in the womb of Mary.

But the same Spirit who converses lovingly with us in our hearts also anoints us to proclaim the Good News of our union with God to all the world. Mary went in haste to Elizabeth, Jesus returned to Nazareth, the disciples took to the streets of Jerusalem to share the bountiful joy of the Holy Spirit. Since the Spirit is the bond of love between Father and Son, we should not be surprised that the gifts of the Spirit are not given us for ourselves, but for the good of others. God wants to give a year of favor to all people, and He has chosen us to be His instruments, to carry this Jubilee into a world that is frequently marked by despair and suspicion.

The charismatic renewal has been a singular grace in the life of the Church—surely one of the first fruits of that new Pentecost for which Pope John prayed. The vitality and enthusiasm in the Spirit, which marks charismatic prayer, has created a kind of informal ecumenism. But the pattern of Jesus’ Baptism, Pentecost, and the Annunciation call us, even as we value these charisms, to go deeper and broader in the Jubilee Year -- deeper to ongoing inner conversion, and broader to the ends of earth which await the Gospel.

Two thousand years ago, prompted by the urging of the Spirit, Jesus proclaimed a Year of Favor from the Lord to a tiny congregation in a backwater synagogue of Galilee.

Through His death and resurrection He has enabled us to receive this same Spirit, so that the same grace from the Father may be proclaimed by the word of Christ by the Holy Spirit living and active in us. There is cause for great rejoicing here!

Fr. Walsh is Dean of Students and Assistant Professor of systematic Theology at St. Patrick's Seminary, Menlo Park, California.