When Jesus ascended to Heaven, the disciples were charged to wait. They waited 10 days for the strength and power of the Holy Spirit to descend. But why did the Holy Spirit not come while Christ was present, or even immediately after his departure, but rather after 10 days? Why did the Lord want them to pray and wait?

 

“It was fit that they should first be brought to have a longing desire for that event, and so receive the grace. For this reason Christ Himself departed, and then the Spirit descended. It is the same with us also; for our desires towards God are then most raised, when we stand in need.” (St-John Chrysostom)

 

Today, if we have already received the Holy Spirit in Baptism, does it mean that we have nothing else to wait for? The answer to this question will open the way to a lesson of deep importance. The Holy Spirit is not given to us as a possession of which we have the charge and mastery, and which we can use at our own will. No. The Holy Spirit is given to us to be our Master, and to have charge of us. It is not we who are to use Him, but rather He that must use us. We need to ask for the Fullness of the Spirit so that He may work in us as mightily as He did in the lives of the Saints. The Lord teaches us to ask, and ensures us that He will give us this fullness of the Spirit as He says “how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” (Luke 11:13) That is why we ask the Lord everyday in the 3rd Hour Prayer of the Agpeya (Coptic Book of Hourly Prayers) to “not take His Holy Spirit from us, but rather to renew Him within us” and to “graciously come and abide in us”. The fullness of the Holy Spirit is not given to us in a single one-time act, but works and grows inside us daily as we live in union with Him. “He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit.” (John 15:5)

 

But again one may ask, ‘why does the Lord not give us the fullness of His Spirit in a single moment?’ We often wonder at the Lord’s delays, and why he sometimes makes us wait.

 

The very act of waiting and longing for God’s Spirit to dwell in us more fully, expresses our poverty, our emptiness, our need. It is only under this condition of being “poor in spirit” that the Lord can come and dwell in us richly. It is when we empty ourselves that the Spirit can fill us. St-Isaac the Syrian teaches that sometimes the grace of God leaves us for a short time, in order for us to remember how utterly helpless we are without God’s grace. Its absence reveals to us our weakness and poverty, and teaches us to come again like beggars before the throne of God.

 

David the king, although enjoying royal power to fulfill any of his wishes at the snap of a finger, knew how to wait on the Lord. “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in His word I do hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning - yes, more than those who watch for the morning.” (Psalm 130:5-6)

 

Come brothers and sisters, let us wait and pray fervently along with the Disciples for the Spirit to come in its fullness. Our waiting must be as real and urgent as that of the disciples in the Upper Room, and surely the Lord will fulfill His promise. “Wait on the LORD; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the LORD!” (Ps 27:14)