(Abbot Thomas Keating at the Trappist Abbey, St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts.) 

On the last and great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out: "If any one is thirsty, let that person come to me and drink. The one who believes in me, as Scripture said: 'From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.'" [John 7:37-39]

Each feast of the Liturgical Year is both an event to be celebrated and a grace to be received. The grace of Christmas is to know Christ in his humanity. The grace of Epiphany is to know him in his divinity. The grace of Holy Week is to know him in his emptying and dying. The grace of Easter is to know him in his triumph over sin and death. The grace of the Ascension is to know him as the cosmic Christ. It is to know the glorified Christ, who has passed, not into some geographical location, but into the heart of all creation.

The cosmic Christ, revealed in the Mystery of the Ascension, manifests our true self and the inner nature of all reality. What is manifested is the living, vibrant Spirit, filling us and all things with boundless light, life and love. The Spirit is always present, yet always coming. That is because the Divine-actuality becomes present in a new way each time we move to a new level of spiritual awareness. The Spirit has been given; yet he is always waiting to be received so that he can give himself again, and more completely. What then is the special grace of Pentecost?

On the day of his resurrection, Jesus breathed his Spirit upon his disciples, saying: "Receive the Holy Spirit." (John 20:22) On the day of the Ascension, forty days later, he "charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father…before many days, you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit." (Acts 1:4-5)

The Spirit, then, is not given only once. He is an ongoing promise, an endless promise - a promise that is always fulfilled and always being fulfilled, because the Spirit is infinite and boundless and can never be fully plumbed.

The Spirit is the ultimate promise of the Father. A promise is a free gift. No one is bound to make a promise. Once a promise is made, however, one is bound. When God binds himself, it is with absolute freedom, absolute fidelity. The Spirit, as promise, is a gift, not a possession. He is a promise that has been communicated; hence never to be taken back, since God is infinitely faithful to his promises. Note that the communication is by way of gift, not possession. Like the air we breathe, we can have all that we wish to take into our lungs, but it does not belong to us. If we try to take possession of it - stuff it in a closet for safekeeping - our efforts will be in vain. Air is not made to be possessed, and neither is the Spirit.

The divine Spirit is all gift but will not acquiesce to a possessive attitude. He is all ours as long as we give him away. "The wind blows where it wills and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know when it comes or whither it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." (John 3:8) In these words, Jesus explained to Nicodemus and to us that we have no control over the Spirit. In fact, it is in giving him away that we manifest that we truly have received him. He is the supreme gift, but supremely himself, supremely free.

The Spirit of God, the promise of the Father, sums up in himself all the promises of Christ. For they all point to him. The Incarnation is a promise. The passion and death of Jesus are promises. His Resurrection and Ascension are each a promise. Pentecost itself, the outpouring of the Spirit, is a promise. All are promises and pledges of the divine Spirit, present and to be received at every moment. He is the last, the greatest and completion of all God's promises, the living summary of them all. Faith in him is faith in the whole of revelation. Openness and surrender to his guidance is the continuation of God's revelation in us and through us. It is be involved in the redemption of the world and in the divinization of the cosmos. To know that Christ is all in all and to know his Spirit, the ongoing promise of the Father - this is the grace of Pentecost.

Between God and us, two extremes meet: He who is everything and we who are nothing at all. It is the Spirit who makes us one with God and in God, just as the Word is with God and is God - the Word by nature, we by participation and communication. Jesus prayed for this unity at the Last Supper. Many of his words on that occasion find their fulfillment and ultimate significance in the outpouring of the Spirit into our minds and hearts. Jesus said, "The glory you have given to me, I have given to them, that they may be one as we are one. I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one." (John 17:22-23)

The Spirit is the gift of God welling up in the Trinity from the common heart of Father and the Son. He is the overflow of the divine life into the sacred humanity of Jesus, and then into the rest of us, his members.

"If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'" (John 7:37-38) John tells us that Jesus was speaking of the Spirit when he uttered these words. The Spirit is the stream of living water which wells up in those who believe. It is the same Spirit that causes our hearts to rejoice because of the confidence that he inspires in God as Father. Abba, the word that spontaneously wells up in us, sums up our intimacy with God and our awareness of being not only with God as friend to friend, but in God. We are penetrated by God and penetrating into God, through the mysterious, all-enveloping, all-absorbing and all-embracing Spirit.

Jesus in his priestly prayer for his disciples prayed "that they may all be one; as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us." (John 17:21) It is the Spirit who causes us to be one in the Body of Christ. We have all received the same Spirit, enlivening us and causing us to be in Christ, in the Father, in the Spirit.

We are in God and God is in us, and the unifying force is the Spirit. To live in the Spirit is the fulfillment of every law and commandment, the sum of every duty to each other, and the joy of oneness with everything that is.

Reprinted from The Mystery of Christ: The Liturgy As Spiritual Experience (New York: Continuum, 1996), pp.90-92.