Article September 18, 1989 Issue

When the Holy Ghost enters our lives

Julio C. Rivas T.

Once while I was addressing a group of teen-agers at a shelter for runaways, a young man suddenly exploded with anger and let me know in strong words that he did not appreciate my being there. Although I tried to explain to him that I was there because I cared for all of them and that together we could learn more about how much God loves us, he went on to threaten me with physical harm. I felt a rush of anger sweep over me.

I now had to deal with both my own anger and his. At the same time, I knew that I had to purify my own feelings before I could bring healing to the situation. Looking away from him, I prayed. I recognized that the battle was not between him and me, but between the Holy Ghost, or divine Spirit, and evil. In silent prayer I asked God to help me identify him with the same love God expressed for Christ Jesus when he said, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Matt. 3:17. I realized that this truth applied to all God's children, and that this young man—and the rest of us—were actually His offspring. Also, remembering the spirit of Jesus' command to the devil in the wilderness, "Get thee behind me, Satan," Luke 4:8. I ejected with a sense of spiritual power the anger and tension that I was feeling. I affirmed that divine Truth's omnipotence and omnipresence were actually present and that everyone within that room could express receptivity, humility, and love.

Referring to the Christlike understanding of spiritual being that flowed into the disciples' receptive thought after their Master had ascended, Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "The advent of this understanding is what is meant by the descent of the Holy Ghost,—that influx of divine Science which so illuminated the Pentecostal Day and is now repeating its ancient history." Science and Health, p. 43. On another page, Science and Health speaks further of the disciples' experience: "His students then received the Holy Ghost. By this is meant, that by all they had witnessed and suffered, they were roused to an enlarged understanding of divine Science, even to the spiritual interpretation and discernment of Jesus' teachings and demonstrations, which gave them a faint conception of the Life which is God." Ibid., pp. 46—47.

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