A generous request being answered

“As the Lord lives, and as you live, I will not leave you,” Elijah says to Elisha  in the first reading of today’s liturgy (See 2 Kings 2: 1, 6-14).  Knowing, however, that his life on this earth is drawing to a close, he says to Elisha: “Ask for whatever I may do for you, before I am taken from you.”  Elisha asks for “a double portion” of Elijah’s spirit and it is given him.  That may surprise us but let us move forward in history to the time of Jesus’ death.  Just prior to going to Calvary, Jesus leaves us His very self in the form of bread and wine—a gift far greater than Elijah giving Elisha a double portion of his spirit. Following His resurrection, Jesus tells the disciples that He is returning to the Father: “I shall ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth….In a short time the world will no longer see me; but you will see that I live and you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you…I have said these things to you while still with you; but the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom  the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything…Peace I bequeath to you, my own peace I give you….” (John 14: 16, 19-20, 25-27)--all of this foreshadowed by Elijah and Elisha in today’s first reading.

Elisha receives double Elijah’s spirit. You and I receive the Lord Jesus in the Eucharist and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the love between the Father and the Son, a Spirit of courage and boldness,  in Baptism, Confirmation and all of the sacraments, a Spirit that changed the apostles from men who cowered in the upper room prior to Pentecost to men who gave their lives for the sake of spreading the news of Jesus’ resurrection and the Good News of the Gospel to all nations. Nothing now was too much for them. They embraced discipleship completely!

My prayer: May my life reflect the fact that God has given me more than a double portion of His Spirit. He’s given me Himself, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, and the Spirit, the third person of the Trinity! Does my life reflect the fact that God the Father, God the Son,  and I are one in the Spirit?