In Ephesus, Saint Paul encounters a group of believers who have no knowledge of the Holy Spirit (Acts 19:1-8). The only baptism that they know is a baptism of repentance, the baptism proclaimed by the one who was to prepare the way for Jesus. But what relevance does this episode have for us today? Surely, all of our baptisms are well regulated, performed according to the canons of the Church and using the scriptural formula that Jesus himself gave us when he instructed us to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19). Even presuming that this were the case, this scripture has more to offer us than a historical footnote regarding the early Church.
Many believers conceive of the faith as existing primarily with reference to sin and repentance. I sin, and Christ redeems me—it is as simple as that! There is truth in this thought, but there is more to the faith than this, for our God is ever-greater! First of all, we must acknowledge that, in a world broken by sin, the reality of sin must be faced and grappled with if we are, in any true sense, to pass into that heavenly kingdom where “every tear will be wiped away and death will be no more” (cf. Rev 21:4). For this reason, John the Baptist’s mission remains ever important: without the recognition of one’s sin and the firm resolve to turn away from sin towards the life that God offers, our supposed spiritual progress remains an illusion. In fact, we would do well to recall that “the genuine revelation of sin is always ‘good news,’ because it is the greater revelation of God’s ever-greater love for us and of the life that God’s grace now offers us in that revelation” (see https://www.magisspirituality.org/ignatian_reflection/19-01-27/).
Nonetheless, while redemption from sin has a central place in our faith, there is something even more central: that life of God that is revealed and offered to us, even now, and even into that eternity where sin will be no more. For indeed, where sin is no more, it is that divine life of love alone which remains. And that life is offered to us, already now, through the Holy Spirit that the Son promises, so that we might abide in God as the Son abides in the Father. Let us, therefore, not be satisfied with that belief that contents itself with grovelling petitions for pardon and instead ask the Son to send us his Spirit, so that we might ever more decisively turn from sin and bear witness, through our lives, to that divine life that we live which enables us to “do the works that I do, and greater things than these” (Jn 14:12).