This is Pentecost Sunday, the coming of the Holy Spirit promised by Jesus to his disciples. The reality of the Holy Spirit is something we overlook, take for granted, do not take seriously or simply ignore. But the Person of the Holy Spirit is the active agent of our faith in the world and in our personal soul. Every once in a while, I get asked why the Church no longer uses the term Holy Ghost? The use of Spirit was an attempt to move away from the scary, negative connotations surrounding the word “ghost.” The word ghost used to simply mean a spirit being. Only in recent history had it come to mean, almost exclusively, the spirit of a deceased human. So Holy Ghost was thought to be confusing. However, many of the well-intended changes made by the Church 60 years ago haven’t played out well in their actual results. (I could list many.) The downside of using the term Spirit, is that folks tend to think of Him as a strange power like electricity or radiation, not a person, but a fluid power of some mysterious force. Attempts by the Church to define the Spirit as the love between the Father and the Son lend to this misconception. The Holy Spirit is a person like the Father and the Son. According to Church teaching, the Father is your creator, the Son is your redeemer, and the Holy Spirit is your sanctifier. This means that He is “setting you apart” as the child of God the Father in the image of God the Son. Through your baptism and confirmation, the Holy Spirit is in you and with you always. Pentecost reminds us, that like the original disciples, we need to be intentional and prayerful if we are to fully cooperate with the Holy Spirit’s companionship and work. Yours in Christ our Lord, Fr. Sid