THE LIVING WORD
Reading Scripture from the Heart of the Church
Holy Spirit and Holy Boldness
Dr. Mary Healy
H
ow are we to proclaim the Good News of Christ effectively in a
world that is daily becoming more secular and more hostile to
Christian faith? Jesus himself revealed the secret. Just before ascending
into heaven, he gave his disciples their missionary mandate to be his
witnesses to all nations. But then he told them not to go yet, because
they still lacked an essential thing: “Wait for the promise of the Father…
for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy
Spirit.” (Acts 1:4-5) Only through an outpouring of the Spirit of God into
their hearts will the disciples have the motivation, the clarity, the conviction, the joy in the
midst of persecution, and the supernatural power to carry out their evangelizing mission.
On the day of Pentecost Jesus’ promise
was fulfilled. The Holy Spirit fell upon the
disciples gathered in the Upper Room with a
mighty wind and tongues as of fire. The love
of God began to burn within their hearts.
Their timidity and fear vanished, and they
were filled with an extraordinary boldness.
Compelled by the love of Christ, they did as
Jesus had commanded (L.k. 10:9; Mk 16:17-18) :
they went out in all directions to proclaim
the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit,
accompanied by healings, miracles, signs
and wonders.
Throughout the Book of Acts, Luke re-
cords the astonishing effectiveness of the
Spirit-empowered evangelism of the early
Christians. For example, Philip goes to a
Samaritan town to preach Jesus, the Jewish
Messiah, and despite the intense animosity
between Jews and Samaritans, crowds of
people believe and are baptized. Luke tells
us why: “The multitudes with one accord
gave heed to what was said by Philip, when
they heard him and saw the signs which he
did. For unclean spirits came out of many
who were possessed…; and many who
were paralyzed or lame were healed.” (Acts
8:6-7) With their ears they heard the verbal
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message of the gospel; with their eyes they
saw the accompanying signs that visibly
corroborated the truth of the message.
When Paul preaches in Ephesus, his
authority over sicknesses and demons be-
comes so widely known that crowds of
people gather for a voluntary book-burning
and public confession of all their occult
practices. “And fear fell upon them all; the
name of the Lord Jesus was extolled… and
the word of the Lord grew and prevailed
mightily” (Acts 19:17, 20) .
The Holy Spirit sometimes gives Christ’s
followers specific directives as to when,
where, whom, and how to evangelize. Phil-
ip evangelizes an Ethiopian eunuch at the
prompting of the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:29) . The
Spirit instructs Peter to visit without hesitation
the house of a gentile, Cornelius, and then
confirms Peter’s preaching by falling upon all
those present (10:19-20, 44) . The Spirit directs
the church in Antioch to send off Barnabas
and Paul on an evangelistic tour (13:1-3) . The
Spirit later forbids Paul to preach in Asia, and
instead leads him by means of a vision to Eu-
rope (16:6-10), and then to Jerusalem (20:22) .
Jesus had promised that in times of per-
secution, we ought not to be anxious about
Sacred Heart Major Seminary | Mosaic | Winter 2020
what to say, “for the Holy Spirit will teach you
in that very hour what you ought to say” (Lk
12:12) . This promise is strikingly fulfilled in St.
Stephen, “a man full of faith and of the Holy
Spirit,” who proclaimed the gospel with signs
and wonders and whose adversaries “could
not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with
which he was speaking” (Acts 6:8-10) .
The Holy Spirit consoles Christians in
times of trouble and gives them supernatu-
ral fortitude under persecution. After Paul
and Barnabas were ignominiously driven
from the city of Antioch in Pisidia, they were
filled with joy and the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:52) .
Paul and Silas, beaten and thrown into
prison, sang hymns of praise (16:25) . By pro-
phetic words, the Spirit gave Paul advance
warning that he would face imprisonment
and the joyful resolve to complete his mis-
sion (20:23-24; 21:11-14) .
The Acts of the Apostles could truly be
called “the Acts of the Holy Spirit,” and to-
day no less than in the apostolic Church,
the Holy Spirit remains the principal agent
of evangelization.
Dr. Mary Healy is professor of Sacred Scripture at
Sacred Heart.