While everyone is sharing articles about Pope Leo’s new encyclical, I’m still over here on Pentecost. I’ll get to Magnifica Humanitas eventually, but right now I’m interested in the spiritual significance of waterfalls for a life led by the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit isn’t just for Pentecost, where for one day we wear red and think about fire. In fact, I think the Holy Spirit is the most underrated person of the Trinity, who we often misunderstand or neglect to even think about. Perhaps it’s because the life of God is so difficult to put into words—the experience so beyond our understanding—that we don’t often speak of the Holy Spirit.
And yet, the sending of the Spirit at Pentecost started a movement, gave birth to the Church, and activated the life of God in us. While Pentecost is an important (monumental!) feast and celebration, the work of the Spirit is to live in us every moment of every day.
For me, the Holy Spirit is everything; He is the one who has given me access to the life of God, who has made the Scriptures come alive, and who has animated my prayer. We could not pray without the Holy Spirit! That is why Jesus said, before His Ascension, that it is better for us that He goes, “for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7). By sending the Spirit, God’s law was written on our hearts, and now we have the grace available to us to choose the good and to love God.
Since the Spirit is so hard to comprehend, let us compare the outpouring of the Spirit to a waterfall. My family recently got back from a trip to Pagosa Springs in southern Colorado, in which we visited the 102-ft.-tall Treasure Falls, so this feels timely.
Water is essential to life, but waterfalls are different than pools, lakes, or even rivers. On our hike, we knew we were getting close to the falls when we could hear the roar of the water tumbling over the edge and dropping 100 feet to the rocks below. As we approached, we were drenched with mist as a reminder of the force and might of the water. Waterfalls demonstrate movement and power—just how the Holy Spirit works in our lives.
Standing by the falls, I felt the loud rumble in my chest and the mist soaking my clothes and hair. As we took pictures of the waterfall, it occurred to me that a picture will never be the same as experiencing it. I don’t mean we experienced standing under it, (for that would have really hurt), but we felt the droplets soak into us and heard the thunderous roar echo in our ears. You can’t experience that magnificence from a picture. We can admire the falls from a mediated distance, or we can let its power penetrate and inundate us, just like with the Holy Spirit. Are we experiencing the Spirit in our lives, or are we just acknowledging Him in our prayers, such as in the sign of the cross?
The water begins high up, and then must take a leap off the terrifying, precipitous edge to the rocks below. Only then does the water experience the joy of flight and the wild adventure that awaits as it flows downstream. The Spirit invites us to this kind of adventurous journey when we take that first step and say, “Okay, Holy Spirit, lead the way.” It can be terrifying to get to the edge and tell God we trust Him, but it’s the only way forward: to lean into the Spirit, to enter into the mystery of God and the life He has planned for us.
And what usually creates a waterfall anyway? Fed by a stream and often carved over thousands of years, the water slowly erodes the rock until there is nowhere to go but down off the edge in a magnificent display of abundance. It is literally an outpouring of water over a rocky cliff.
Standing below Treasure Falls and looking up, all I could think was that I was experiencing an outpouring of abundance. The water kept coming, overflowing into the pool below and beyond. There was no stinginess, no stopping the flow. This is life in the Spirit: an abundance of grace overflowing in our hearts, that began at baptism when water was poured on our heads, and we were filled with the indwelling of the Holy Trinity.
The Spirit moves fluidly, just like water. In the Gospel of John, Jesus connects water with the Spirit all over the place, such as:
John 3:5- “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”
John 7:37- Jesus said, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.’ Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive.”
And then we get back to Pentecost.
In his Pentecost speech (Acts 2:17), Peter quotes Joel 2:28-29: “And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh. . . I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.”
When I hear that the Spirit will be poured out, I think of a waterfall of abundant grace, a powerful immersion into the life of God. The disciples received that outpouring on Pentecost, and 3,000 people were baptized that day. Later, Philip was led by the Spirit to run up to a chariot and evangelize the Ethiopian eunuch, leading to his baptism (and I’m told this led to a flourishing ancient Christian community in Ethiopia). All the apostles, in fact, were sent forth on wild adventures of evangelization (and martyrdom), and now they experience the joy of union with God forever.
St. Paul traveled to distant towns, only to end up in prison (several times), where he was ultimately beheaded. And yet, He listened to the Spirit, embraced his imprisonment, and we now have (as part of our canon of Scripture) many of the letters that he sent to churches during this time. The Spirit still speaks to us through these letters. May we all let the Spirit guide us in similarly impactful ways.
In my life, openness to the Spirit has taken me on mission trips, opened doors to friendship, helped me write my books, give talks, and go deeper in my own relationship with God. The wisdom of the Spirit has nudged me to invite others on the journey, and the consolation of the Spirit has kept me close to the Church even in difficult times.
When we receive an outpouring of the Spirit and let Him overflow onto others, we participate in building up the Church. And so, we must invite the Spirit in; we must give Him permission to have His way, to help us take the next step, to allow grace to dwell deeply and richly in our souls. The Spirit living in us is how we are transformed into the image of God.
The invitation for you today is to ask the Holy Spirit to pour into you, help you take a leap of faith, and then live by the Spirit’s inspirations. Ask Him to help you pray, to open the Scriptures, to whisper in your ear. It starts with, “Come, Holy Spirit.”
“The Holy Spirit is the living water ‘welling up to eternal life’ in the heart that prays.” CCC 2652
**If you liked this reflection, you will enjoy my new book called “Ineffable: Learning to Love the God Beyond Words,” coming out this fall. And yes, I mention waterfalls.
Also this month, I wrote about screens, waiting, and giving your children their identity:
On Teaching Your Kids to Wait Well at Denver Catholic - “Every moment we have to wait in a doctor’s office, at a bus stop, in a grocery line or at a red light is an opportunity to practice being still and waiting for the Lord. Only in silence can we hear the Lord speak to us in our hearts. How will our children ever learn to hear God — or love him — if they do not know how to embrace the waiting and the silence?”
Naming and Identity: Our Greatest Calling as Parents at Catholicmom.com - “Over the last fifteen years of parenting, though, I’ve realized that it isn’t enough to name your child; you must also give them their identity. Part of this identity is belonging in your family, qualities or aspects that bind your family members together.
But the deepest part of identity is belonging in God’s family, being made for great things such as giving yourself for another. So many kids are walking around like zombies, their eyes glued to their phones, not giving a thought to the meaning of their existence. They have no framework for understanding suffering, or motivation to do anything great. They are most often just getting through the day. As Catholic parents, we can speak into that. We can help them become capable of greatness through knowing their Divine Father.”
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