If you haven’t met St. Cyril of Jerusalem (AD 313-386) yet, you should get to know him. He vies for the title of the Church’s best ever catechist – indeed, he is truly the Catechetical Doctor! His lectures on the Holy Spirit are outstanding in beauty and clarity – so much that the Church chose his writings to enshrine as part of the Divine Office for all clergy and religious to meditate upon each year.

In His encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:1-41) the Lord uses his natural thirst in the heat of the day as a springboard to a deeper conversation about Himself as the Wellspring of living water. This idea of living water is, as St. Cyril explains, a description of the grace of the Holy Spirit, so often described in elemental ways.

But isn’t this curious? God the Holy Spirit – as unrelated to matter as you can get – should be associated with the most basic of the elements of nature: air, fire and water. Only ‘earth’ is avoided – perhaps because the other three all have their impact upon earth – and thus in such analogies the earth represents us.

St. Cyril’s beautiful observation is that all things in nature depend upon water – and water is always the same in itself, simple and pure H2O, but produces such different effects in those upon those it acts. As with water, so the Holy Spirit’s action “…is different in different people, but [He] Himself is always the same.” Thus the same Spirit who encourages the weak to be strong, may also inspire the prophet to preach, the artist to create and all of us to fast, or pray.

In other words, God the Spirit responds to our need – so that every corner of our being might be filled up with Him, and thus we might be transformed, day-by-day, into little Christs – for that is what being called a ‘Christian’ means. There is no end to the bounty of goodness that God pours forth in Himself, by the Gift of the Indwelling Spirit. Whatever you truly require will be granted to you by the author of life itself!

This, my dear friends, is the privilege of Baptism. Perhaps you have a good understanding of what an honor that is now, but all of us are so greatly endowed with His presence already, that if we stopped to contemplate it too much we would die of joy! On this great Feast then, let us all make a solemn pledge to beg the Spirit to remove our hearts of stone and give us heart of flesh instead!