How Do You Explain the Holy Spirit to Someone Who Knows Him Not?

How do you explain the Holy Spirit

to someone who knows Him not?

How do you explain fire

to someone who has never warmed her hands over a blazing wood stove on a bitter winter night?

How do you explain anointing

to someone who has never been healed by a Mother’s gentle touch?

How do you explain the water

to someone who has never gazed at the sea and wondered what lies on the other side?

How do you explain wind

to someone who has never raised a sail and been sent to where she needs to be?

How do you explain clouds and light

to someone who has never seen the sun’s rays sing through the darkness after the violence of a storm?

How do you explain the dove

to someone who has never seen the purity of its whiteness,

the graceful curves of its form,

heard the compelling coo of its call?

How Do You Explain the Holy Spirit to Someone Who Knows Him Not?

I am fortunate.

I have experienced the burn of the fire

and been grateful for the warmth of its flame.

I have experienced the anointing of a healing touch

and been blessed by it.

I have gazed across the vastness of the open water

and just wondered.

I have had my ship tossed through many stormy seasons

and have been moved by the wind to unknown shores

to where I needed to be for the time I was in.

I have been pelted by driving rains,

feared the lightening as it struck too close,

cried aloud as the clouds shielded Heaven from my sight,

and I have rejoiced in the sun’s rays, staircases to Heaven,

when the Light, more Glorious than I’d imagined, finally broke through.

I have seen the gentleness of the Dove

and have longed to be in its peace.

The Holy Spirit lives within us.
These symbols are our best representation
of what man has not seen but knows to exist.
The power of the Hand of God.
The Finger of the Lord pointing,
providing direction to our wanderings,
and the courage to get us there.

The Holy Spirit is the unseen but tangible force who pushes us to keep move on the right path when we stumble and fall and the world mocks and ridicules and we want to crawl into the roadside ditch wallowing in our shame and misery and just give in.

The Holy Spirit may not be explainable in my inadequate human words, but He bears our sorrows and our burdens, our fears and our pains. When they are so agonizing we cannot find words, He brings them to our Father and communicates them in moaning and groans deeper than we can express in our frailty and our ineptitude.

The Holy Spirit is the completion of the Trinity.

The Holy Spirit is the Strength, the Power, the Driving Force, the Courage, the Refusal to Quit, the Push to Greatness, the Reason to Continue when poor believers would give up,

and the Holy Spirit is not fully explainable by me.

How Do You Explain the Holy Spirit?

I have read the Bible. I have researched the Catechism. I have thought and thought and prayed and prayed and still cannot find words to express what I know to be true, and so I turn the question over to you.

How do you explain the Holy Spirit? How do you share His presence?

God Bless…