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Come, Holy Spirit

 This is one of those times where we may not know why He even bothers with us. We are commanded, "do not grieve the Holy Spirit," and we often do. But His love is relentless, because the "desire" of God is relentless.

The Holy Spirit is the power for us to keep the law of Love. We have no power on our own. We talk a good game about this, but if we really actually believed it, I think we would understand our sins and the struggle against them much more clearly. You cannot grit your teeth, and please God by your own efforts. You can plead with the Holy Spirit. Quoting the poet, Paul said, "in him we live and move and have our being."

Something Bishop Barron said once is floating into my brain. Something about the gentleness of God in Providence, that there is no violence or coercion in God's governance of the world. And yet, being the feeblest of all, we have the most trouble being gentle with ourselves. We are indeed proud sometimes, maybe most of the time.

It's time to get honest in prayer with the Holy Spirit. I might as well tell Him that sometimes, what I am being called to is not joyful or easy. Even if I run completely the other way, the Holy Spirit will not give up on me. Jesus Christ already saw the worst of me, and joyfully died for me. The Holy Spirit has the same outlook on the entire situation. The problem is that we do not share God's outlook. Oftentimes, we would rather punish ourselves, and create some fictional standard to believe in, rather than agree with God.

This is how we end up as the older son in the parable of the prodigal son, if we persist. Let's not do that, if we feel His grace empowering us to make a better choice.

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