Look Intently to Heaven

His persecutors in fury, the deacon and first martyr Stephen intently looked to heaven and saw the glory of God. The Holy Spirit filled Stephen with courageous conviction. The incredible outpouring of the Holy Spirit floods the stories of the Easter Season beginning with the resurrection of Jesus on that Sunday morning. Thomas Keating writes: “The fire of the Holy Spirit, bursting with the fullness of divine energy, rushed upon his sacred remains. The perfumed oil of immense weight and value, symbolizing the Spirit, suggests the immense power that the Spirit exerted when the soul of Christ re-entered his body. In this reunion, the Father poured into the risen Jesus the whole of the divine essence—the utter riches, glory, and prerogatives of the divine nature—in a way that is utterly inconceivable to us.”

The gift of the resurrection is the Holy Spirit. Don’t let a day go by without praying, “Come, Holy Spirit.”