Quench not the Spirit

Today's readings: Isaiah 61, 1-2.10-11; 1 Thessalonians 5, 16-24; John 1, 6-8.19-28.

Again this Sunday, it's John the Baptist who occupies centre stage. But as the Gospel says, "he was not the light, only a witness to speak for the light". Only a voice, a sign, an indication, a witness to a presence that is not evident yet always there. John's witness consists of the revelation of the mystery. "There stands among you - unknown to you - the one who is coming after me".

This is our difficulty today in a world which constantly fails to discern the footprints of God in its culture. We often lament about God's absence on the world scene. In our day and age we are over-encouraged to believe in ourselves and our capabilities. The world needs our witness, not ourselves.

John insists with those who enquire about his identity: "I am not the one", as if to warn us and the Church in general not to speak too much of ourselves, and not to direct to ourselves and our projects those who should instead be directed only to Christ.

Advent is always an appropriate time for us all to truly discern the work of the Spirit in us. As Isaiah says, we've been anointed with the Spirit of the Lord to bring the good news to the poor. But it is also possible for us to quench the Spirit by the way we live. We preach so much, without evangelising. We do so much, without effectively bringing freedom to captives and to the many forms of imprisonment people experience today.

Re-reading Isaiah invites us to conduct an exercise of 'zero-budgeting' - justifying afresh everything we do, why we do it, and whether it should continue. We need to go right back to rediscover the way God wants His Church to be.

As believers, on the one hand we feel that we belong to this world as it is, and on the other hand we hope in a life beyond. We cannot risk isolating ourselves in forms of spiritualism or escapism, indifferent to reality around us. But neither can we give in to the temptation of activism, to the extent of losing the sense of being 'not of this world'.

Reflecting on this dilemma a long time ago in his Spiritual Exercises, St Ignatius said, "man is to make use of created things insofar as they help him in the attainment of his end, and he must rid himself of them insofar as they prove a hindrance to him". Should we engage ourselves in the world, or make ourselves indifferent to all things?

Well, the answer to that is in what we celebrate every Christmas. God speaks the language of incarnation. He definitively entered the world "to bring good news to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted". The reason for being Christians is, like the Baptist, to indicate the way God entered human history, to witness the light that definitively has marked humanity. As Blaise Pascal writes, in the world there is enough darkness not to believe, and enough light to believe.

"Amid the encircling gloom" (Cardinal John Henry Newman), the Lord makes both integrity and peace "spring up in the light of the nations" (Isaiah). This is the dream of the whole world. This is also our dream. We cannot afford to continue judging the world with pre-conceived ideas, as if Christmas never occurred, or worse still, as if Christmas were just mythology. Not quenching the Spirit means being open to His promptings and letting ourselves be led to hope even where darkness reigns.

St Paul says: "Do not despise prophecy." The prophet is someone who tells the truth on the strength of his contact with God. True, there is gloom around us. Facing reality, it may be easier to curse rather than to bless. But the last words of Monsieur le Cure de Torcy in Georges Bernanos's The Diary of a Country Priest are most significant: "Does it matter? Grace is... everywhere!"