Breath of God

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and enkindle in them the fire of your love.

I finish my morning offering, Come Holy Spirit, and the guardian angel prayer and then my thoughts turn to the Office of Readings. This is not normal for my morning prayer time, but I look it up in the quiet darkness, interested that it popped into my mind.

How many are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you have made them all. The earth is full of your riches. There is the sea, vast and wide, with its moving swarms past counting, living things great and small. The ships are moving there and the monsters you made to play with. All of these look to you to give them their food in due season. You give it, they gather it up: you open your hand, they have their fill. You hide your face, they are dismayed; you take back your spirit, they die, returning to the dust from which they come. You send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the earth.

It is one of the origins of that same Holy Spirit prayer I said every morning. And also my favourite meditation wherever I went…the spirit of God enlivening all plants, all people.

In Him we live, and move, and have our being.

I sit in my chair by our coffee station and look out the window, marvelling at the beauty of the dawn, how the trees in the distance have leaves whose chlorophyll (the blood of plants) digest the sun and wind into energy, the trees breathing oxygen into our world. Very similarly, blood and oxygen sustain human life.

He makes all good things.

I have had seven pregnancies in eight years and know the importance of oxygen. Through all those months with every one of my children I have felt my body yearn for more oxygen. My heart rate races and my breath grows faster, I long for water. My breath nourishes my blood and gives life to my baby. No one knows why the heart’s electromagnetic field “pumps”. The source of its power and the ceasing of its power is a mystery.

So goes His Spirit, giving us His Sacred Heart, the Heart I see in my eyelids when I receive Communion. We receive His Heart as we are nestled against the Immaculate Heart of our Mother.

I am the Way, the Truth, the Life.

Everything is animated by His Spirit. I like to envision the entire universe nestled in the palms of His strong hands. He is immense and all-dimensional yet He sparks the Light which marks the microscopic embryo when Life begins and an eternal soul is born.

When I was a teenager my family’s band performed on Christian cruise ships. One night when there was a storm out at sea I snuck past the yellow caution tape and stood on the bow of the ship, revelling in the all-powerful wind that almost swept me away over the railing and into the water. I had never experienced such power and I purposefully experienced it as the Holy Spirit moving upon the waters. The Holy Spirit which enlivens the Sacraments, makes the water holy and our sins be cleansed in Baptism and Reconciliation, makes the Bread into His Heart to be the Life of the World.

When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. When you send forth Your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth.

As I meditate on all these things, looking out the window, I remember hearing about the Hebrew word ruach as a teenager. I look up its uses in the Bible as my children clamor and pour their cereal. I am amazed at all it encompasses both physically and metaphorically. It is the life-giving  breath, the forceful wind, but also the Spirit of God. It is used over and over again in the Bible, giving power to prophets and priests, giving knowledge, skill, courage. In Ezekiel 37 this wind breathes life into dry bones, entering bodies to restore breath and spirit.

Just as God’s wind and water and sun breathes life into all things, His Holy Spirit, His Light, the blood and water pouring from His side, renews us.

The Lord looked upon all he had made and saw that it was very good, alleluia.