Pentecost Sunday

so that our capacity to be with God is actualized. It’s not enough that we are enabled to know and love God. That potency has to be put into act with the grace of God who gives it to us in abundance.

We have to do our part, of course. And the first thing to do is to be aware that there is such a reality as developing a life in the Spirit, and from there start cultivating the proper attitudes, skills and virtues.

This may look like a daunting, overwhelming task, but it can always be done. Sure, there will be difficult, awkward moments, but those usually happen in the beginning of the learning curve. As long as we persist, time will come when living in intimate relationship with the Spirit becomes second nature to us.

If we live the life in the Spirit, we would always be checking the spirit behind everything in our life. We cannot be naïve and just accept things as they come. We need to check if the spirit behind comes from God or not.

In this, we have received enough warnings from Sacred Scripture. “Beloved,” St. John, for example, in his first letter tells us, “do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” (4,1)

There are many kinds of spirits roaming around the world, and we have to learn how to discern them. There is the spirit of God, the spirit of Christ as opposed to the antichrist. There is also the evil spirit, and the spirit of the world that is dominated by the evil one.