Memorial of Saint Teresa of Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church
Let's be honest: when someone doesn’t pay attention to you, it can drive one mad. That feeling of being invisible, insignificant, unworthy of someone’s time. Even in the smallest of circumstances, I know it causes me to question the person who cannot be present with me. What do they have better to do or think about? Are they my true friend in this moment? Do they value me or care about me at all?
Yet I've been guilty of this to others, even towards my wife. She truly is a step into sainthood with how I can be in my own thought patterns without fully engaging in her concerns. All I'm trying to say is, we've probably been on either side of this dilemma and usually with someone we care deeply about.
This is where my mind went when reading today’s Gospel reading from Luke. Jesus instructs his disciples to not deny Him but especially never to deny the Holy Spirit, the one thing we must never ignore. The feelings are more impactful here when I think of how I don’t want others to deny me, or even how awful I feel denying/ignoring the concerns of my own partner.
No, God is not as petty as us humans when we unjustly crave the attention of others and are too prideful to realize we are not the god in everyone else’s lives. I mean, God is God. But I think we can use our own feelings to point to how strongly we must take Christ’s words here, especially in relation to the Holy Spirit.
After all, the Holy Spirit is the one who “will teach you at that moment what you should say.” It sounds like Jesus is trying to show us that we may at times ignore others and even Jesus and His teachings, but that ignoring the moving of the Spirit, the loving prompts in our hearts, the diving whispers calling out to us, is what is most destructive in our lives. It is not wise to ignore those that want nothing but good for us.
We can be in our deepest prayer and have our own thoughts and concerns in mind, but we may be risking denying the Holy Spirit if we only fill that time up without leaving space to listen. This takes a tremendous amount a trust. If I’m going to be a better husband, I will need to trust that my wife is also going to pay attention to my concerns and that everything she says in some way big or small is important to my life. If I’m going to be a better disciple, I will need to trust that the Spirit will speak, and sometimes not speak, in ways that are indeed good for me and will come in a time, in a moment, that will lead to the benefit of myself or someone else.
The Holy Spirit truly deserves our attention and, beyond that, our devotion. As a family of parishes, we pray to the Holy Spirit during our petitions to strengthen us and keep us united on a faith-filled path. As we continue to call upon the divine whisper of God, may we grow in desire to pay attention and to realize the Spirit works for our good - as individuals and as a community.
-Joe Oliveri
The prayer to the Holy Spirit from the petitions mentioned in the reflection can be found here.