Do Not Quench the Spirit

Caffeine is my addiction. Starting at age twelve or so, I started drinking pop every day and have moved on to drinking an estimate of three cups of coffee a day. I sometimes see it as my lifeline to sanity and productivity. And this addiction has come with physical side effects, which mainly result from dehydration. I am constantly thirsty. No lotion can moisturize the sand-paper like consistency of my water-depleted skin. Yearning for hydration, my body responds with the onset of head and stomach aches. And though I know that my body is thirsting for hydration, I quench that thirst by responding to my greater desire for caffeine.

Throughout the Old Testament, we hear psalmists and prophets speak of their thirst for the Lord. Psalm 63:2 says, "O God, for you I long. For you my body yearns; for you my soul thirsts". And we are familiar with this experience of longing for the Lord to come and reveal himself to us. Yet in the New Testament, St. Paul speaks to an opposing reality. In 1 Thessalonians 5:19 he says this simple, yet profound sentence, "Do not quench the Spirit". While much of the time, we speak of ourselves yearning for the Lord, we rarely point out that we often are willingly quenching the thirst we have for the Holy Spirit to be further activated in our lives.

Ezekiel 37 is one of the most bizarre visions in Scripture, but it beautifully illustrates this point. In this passage, the Lord takes the prophet Ezekiel out into the center of a plain that is filled in every direction with dry bones and instructs him to prophecy over the bones saying "Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord: 'See! I will bring spirit into you that you may come to life'". And as Ezekiel is prophesying over the bones, the Lord explains that these bones represent the whole house of Israel whose people have been crying out "Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost, and we are cut off". And by quenching our thirst FOR the Spirit, our bones, too, become dried up, our hope is lost, and we are cut off from the life-giving nature OF the Spirit.

But how do we do this? Our busy schedules produce in us a lack of urgency in receiving the Sacraments with frequency. We contrive our own plans for our futures and fail to allow the Spirit to direct us to what will truly fulfill us. With minds and hearts full of our own expectations, we place limitations on what the Spirit is able to do within us. By perceiving ourselves as able to become holier by our own merit, we fail to see the need for us to be infused with the Gifts and fruits of the Spirit. And by our failure to call on the Holy Spirit to "kindle in us a desire" for his love, we are depriving ourselves of the life which he wishes to pour out readily and overwhelmingly into our hearts.

So today, I believe the Lord is crying out to us and saying, "Do you realize what I could do IN YOU if you were to stop quenching the power of my Holy Spirit? Do you realize that the peace you desire, the joy that others will find so attractive, the faith you are aspiring to obtain, and the perfection of love you wish to exhibit could be a reality if you allowed yourself to bathe in my Spirit?" The Spirit desires to do within us that which we cannot do ourselves. The Spirit is promising us life which our dry bones fail to provide. The Spirit promises hope when our own experience of the world offers desolation. And the Spirit offers intimacy, consolation, and purpose when our own pursuits leave us feeling estranged, despairing, and unfulfilled. So today let us reflect on our own lives and recognize the ways that we are quenching our desire for the Spirit by responding to the desires of our own wills. And even more, let us pray for a new Pentecost in which we, filled with the Spirit, might proclaim the Gospel with boldness and authority to a world full of dry bones.