"Put Grief to Death": A Reflection on the Second Reading for August 12th, 2018: Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Ephesians 4:30-5:2 

30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, with all malice, 32 and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
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5 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

What does it mean to “grieve the Holy Spirit”? At first, I thought the instruction in this passage was that I should not grieve, and I wondered how I could grieve the Holy Spirit. It didn’t make sense to me until I did some further reading and realized that I was being asked to avoid causing the Holy Spirit grief. Why would the Holy Spirit grieve because of me? What does it mean to grieve?

To grieve means to lament, to mourn, or to upset. When we grieve another, we cause distress or sorrow to them. We can sometimes forget that the Holy Spirit is a person—the third person of the Trinity—and He experiences grief just as humans do in the face of disappointment or tragedy. When things are not as they should be—because of sin and its consequences—the Spirit mourns. Death should not exist, and sin can cause spiritual death—separating us from the Life and Love we were created for. The Love who is the Spirit of God. He is the font of Love, the source of all Grace, and the eternal flame. For all of time He has burned with a desire to be one with us, His beloved. So, of course, when we do anything to compromise that communion which God made us for, He grieves.

Here, He tells us to, “put away… all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander”. When we are filled with these emotions and partake in these actions, we make no room for Love. Having long, convoluted and unimportant arguments (wrangling), resenting what we perceive as unfair treatment (bitterness), letting ourselves be overcome by extreme anger (wrath), making damaging or untrue statements about others to destroy their reputation (slander)—these actions limit or destroy our capacity for love. I’m sure we could list many more to avoid. Our reason for avoiding should not be because we have to follow the rules, and His reason for instructing us is not to limit our fun or freedom. We are asked to be “kind”, “tenderhearted”, “forgiving”, and to imitate the Love of God displayed by Christ because it is good to strive for this. Living in Love, we become fully alive and can receive the kind of authentic joy that lasts. It’s not easy to love, but it is worth the battle—it’s a matter of life and death, and we are always invited by our Lord to choose Life.

Let us avoid anything that would grieve the Spirit of God—and out of Love for Him—let us ask Him to show us what we can do to delight Him. Amen.

​Kendra Chisholm

"Living in Love, we become fully alive and can receive the kind of authentic joy that lasts." - Kendra Chisholm (Ora Reflections)