The images used for the Holy Spirit are so evocative: wind, fire, water, all things we cannot predict the course of, and whose power we cannot tame. Even the dove image reminds us that the Spirit sees in ways we do not and cannot. On this great feast of Pentecost let us rejoice that God is everlastingly creative, always ‘doing a new thing’. May we, too, be recreated, made new, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Ephraim of Syria describes the Apostles as farm hands with seeds in their pockets waiting for the order to go out and sow.
There is something familiarly earthy about this .
I had not until this year I had not become aware of the image of ‘dew’ for the Holy Spirit, though I understand it is there in the Latin texts of the mass (and will be restored for us in the corrected translation).
I came across mention of this on another blog yesterday (http://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2011/06/holy-spirit-green-or-red.html), and having followed further links referring to St Ambrose’s exploration of the image of dew, I read today’s reading from St Irenaeus in the ‘Office of Readings’ with a whole new depth of meaning.
I too pray with you that we may all be created, made new, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit! I cannot think of anything nicer.
Thank you for your comments. Stephen Langton’s lovely Pentecost Sequence mentions the dew of the Holy Spirit (the plainsong setting in the Graduale Romanum is very, very beautiful), and I think we all need to remember that the gift of the Spirit is freely given by God. We have only to be receptive.