Waiting for the Spirit

Acts 1.12-14



When the apostles had come together, they asked Jesus, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" He replied, "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven."


Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day's journey away. When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.



Sermon at St Saviour, Scarborough



If I asked you what is the greatest need of the Church today what would you say? More people? More priests? More money? I think I would settle for ‘More prayer’.


This 7th Sunday of Easter comes in the 9 days between the Ascension and Pentecost which give the Church the concept of ‘Novena’ because of the waiting, expectant, prayerful group in Upper Room at this time.


After they came down from the mountain they began to pray. Jesus was no longer visible to them. The cloud of the Ascension had taken him back to glory. The Easter people begin to call for the Holy Spirit that he had promised them. They need his gifts and graces if they were to become effective witnesses to their risen Lord, if they were to become the Church called to proclaim his gospel to all the world.

In every successive generation Christians have needed the presence of the living Lord with them, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to become his effective witnesses to a changing world. The Holy Spirit is the agent of holiness and revival in the church no less today than in any previous generation but the Holy Spirit can only do this work in those who want him to do it enough and display their desire by the depth and determination of their prayer. No wonder that Pope John XXIII pleaded with the church to pray for a New Pentecost.


In all such prayer Christians have two encouragers with them. Mary, who was with the Apostles and the other women, during that first ‘novena to the Holy Spirit’, is with us too and prays with us. Also our Lord, as today’s gospel reminds us, is praying for us. In his high priestly prayer, recorded in John 17, he prays to the Father saying “I have made your name known to those you took from the world to give me….I pray for them….they are in the world….in them I am glorified”. What is more we already have the Holy Spirit with us through our baptism and confirmation and other means of grace. The call is to let the bishop’s prayer for us at our confirmation be answered: “Defend, O Lord, your servant with your heavenly grace, to continue yours for ever and daily to increase in your Holy Spirit, more and more, until coming to your everlasting Kingdom”.

Evelyn Underhill was an Anglican lay woman much given to mystical prayer. She counselled many privately and in retreats. She continues to inspire through her writings.
She led a prayer group. Her last letter to them for Easter 1941 contained this passage:
“Easter and Whitsuntide complete the Christian Mystery by showing us first our Lord himself and then his chosen apostles possessed of a new power – the power of the Spirit – which changed every situation in which they were placed. That supernatural power is still the inheritance of every Christian, and our idea of Christianity is distorted and incomplete unless we rely on it. It is this power and only this which can bring the new Christian society of which we hear so much. We ought to pray for it; expect it, trust it; and as we do this, we shall gradually become more and more sure of it.” She died two months later on Corpus Christi.