The Holy Spirit is not an extra in Christian holiness. Rather the sending of the Spirit is the completing of the entire beautiful plan of God to share his Life with us. Jesus “emptied himself” and took our human nature. As our brother, he let himself be possessed fully by the Spirit. The Spirit powered him through a human life like ours, led him into a loving sacrificial death.
Because Jesus emptied himself totally in trust and love, he could be raised in victory to the eternal glory he had with the Father and the Spirit. But now—and only now, after his death—could the victorious God-man Savior send his Spirit, the Spirit of the Father, to complete his work on earth.
—from the book Live Like Francis: Reflections on Franciscan Life in the World
by Jovian Weigel, OFM
