30 September 2018
Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
There is such a thing as the transferal of spirits. For example, according to Numbers 11:25, the Lord once came down upon Moses in a cloud, and taking some of the spirit that was upon Moses, he bestowed it upon the seventy elders. For the practitioner of Ignatian spirituality, i.e. for someone who wishes to labor with Christ, two points are in order.
First, we must be conscious of which spirits are being transferred onto us from outside. The books we read, the media we consume, the people we spend time with: all of them have their own spirits, and the more we associate with them, the more their spirits are transferred onto us, whether for good or for ill. Hence Psalm 1:1: “Blessed is the man who does not… sit in company with scoffers.”
Second, we must be conscious of the spirit we are transferring onto others. It might not be the spirit we had imagined. It might not be the spirit we labored to project. It might be something sub-conscious or even supra-conscious. True goodness and true evil are too deep and too broad. We really need God’s help to effectively transfer the good spirit onto others. That is a grace worth asking for.