Marcia, my spiritual mom, visited me last week and we took a very pleasant drive to Steamboat Springs. Our time together was a meditation on the generosity of God. The autumn leaves in the high country were shimmering with God’s glory! We had a spiritually uplifting dinner with some friends. And our ride back over Berthoud Pass through the grandeur of the mountains was exhilarating! God has filled the Earth with beauty, but I think He has been especially generous with Colorado!
God is generous, and He’s calling us to be the same. However, sometimes people live with a mentality of scarcity and exclusivity. Case in point: Joshua, the successor of Moses. In this weekend’s reading from the Book of Numbers (11: 25-29), God sends His Spirit upon seventy elders, and they begin to prophesy. But two of them had not attended the prescribed gathering outside the camp. Joshua, therefore, did not consider them qualified to receive the Spirit and said to Moses, “My Lord stop them!” But Moses replies, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets! Would that the Lord might bestow His Spirit on them all!”
Our God was generous with His Spirit in the Old Testament, and even more generous in the New. Read the Acts of the Apostles for an exciting account of how the Holy Spirit breathed miraculous life into the early Church. Even before that, in this weekend’s Gospel there is an interesting case of God’s generosity. Someone who is not one of the twelve apostles was driving out demons in the Name of Jesus. John said to Jesus, “We tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.” But Jesus said, “Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not against us is for us” (Mark 9: 38-40).
God is generous, and He’s calling us to be the same. Do we sometimes live with a mentality of scarcity and exclusivity? What are we afraid of? Would that the Lord might bestow His Spirit upon all people! Let’s pray for that, and then try to get out of the Spirit’s way. The Roman Catholic Church acknowledges that the Holy Spirit is working in other Christian denominations (see the Decree on Ecumenism of Vatican II). Yes, we have the fullness of truth, but we do not have a monopoly on the Holy Spirit. Many other churches are not actively working against us. We have more things in common than things that separate us. The enemy wants to divide us more and more. But we have the most important One in common: Our Lord Jesus Christ. And He says to us today, “Whoever is not against us is for us.”
Let’s learn from each other and support each other in our battle against our common enemy. And let’s pray that the Holy Spirit unites us more and more as we journey in the generosity of God into His kingdom of glory.