Monday of the Holy Spirit.
Ephesians 5:9-19; Matthew 18:10-20.
Read Ephesians 5:9-19
The Church calls today, the day after Pentecost, Monday of the Holy Spirit. The descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was not simply a moment that passed. Rather it was the inauguration of a new mode of existence for the people of God, the life of the Church animated by the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. Monday of the Holy Spirit exists precisely to make this clear. The feast continues, but now the question is pressed upon us: how are we to live in the light of what has been given?
St. Paul tells us, “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil” (5:15-16).
The image of “walking” in St. Paul’s letters is not incidental. It describes the whole orientation of a life — its direction, its manner, the quality of attention brought to each moment. To walk wisely is to live as one who has received the Holy Spirit and knows it; to walk as an unwise man is to live as though Pentecost had not happened, pulled along by the passions and the disorder of a fallen world.
St. John Chrysostom reminds us that, “when Paul says ‘the days are evil,’ he does not mean that they are created evil or that they are by their very nature evil. Rather he says this of the troubling events that occur in time.” (Homily 18 on Ephesians). The evil Paul speaks of is the disturbance wrought by sin in human affairs — the constant turbulence that, if we are not watchful, shapes us rather than us shaping it. This is why the call to wisdom is urgent. Wisdom! Let us be attentive – as we hear in the Liturgy.
“Christ, the Sun of Righteousness, has risen,” St Jerome tells us, “Rise up from the sleep of the age. Walk cautiously and prudently. Cast off folly. Take hold of wisdom. In this way you will be able to avoid changing yourself constantly as you walk through the vicissitudes of the times. Rather you will find a unity within yourself even amid the diversity of the times.” (Commentary on Ephesians)
This interior unity is not a natural achievement. It is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, who gathers and orders the person from within. The wise walking Paul commands is only possible for one who has submitted to this interior work. And the means by which we cooperate with it, Chrysostom tells us, are demanding in their simplicity: “Do not seek honors, do not seek glory, do not seek authority, nor revenge; bear all things and in this way redeem the time.”
To redeem the time is to refuse to be mastered by the spirit of the age — its anxieties, its appetites, its hunger for recognition. It is to bear what comes, to renounce grasping, and in doing so to allow the Holy Spirit to sanctify every moment. This is the life to which Monday of the Holy Spirit calls us: not merely the memory of a feast, but its ongoing reality in the dailiness of our lives.