There is an Eastern legend that I like. It is about a hermit who lived in Tibet. He was a great source of curiosity. He was renowned for his holiness. He was well known for his healing powers.
The legend is that a reporter from the U.S. went to visit him. He brought a camera crew along. The reporter asked the holy man, are you God? Are you an extension of God? Are you an extension of the Holy Trinity? Are you filled with the Holy Spirit?
And the holy man, without any hesitation, replied, “Yes I am God; yes I am an extension of God; yes, I am an extension of the Holy Trinity; yes I am an extension of the Holy Spirit; yes, I am filled with the Holy Spirit.”
And the camera crew and the reporter were stunned.
Then the hermit said to the reporter, “You are God too. You are an extension of God too. You are an extension of the Holy Trinity too. You are filled with the Holy Spirit too. And the only difference between you and me is that I know I am an extension of God and you doubt it.”
In essence, the holy man is saying to me the same words that he said to the reporter. He is saying to me, I know I have divinity within me and you doubt it. I know I have the Holy Spirit within me and you doubt it. I know I have the Holy Trinity within me and you doubt it. I know I am a piece of God and you doubt it.
He is saying to me, I know I have a connection with God and you doubt it. I know I am joined with God and you doubt it. I know I am a container for God and you doubt it. I know that Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit into my soul on the day of my baptism and you doubt it.
He is saying to me, I know I have the gifts of the Holy Spirit within me and you doubt it. I know I have the fruits of the Holy Spirit within me and you doubt it. I know I have divine intelligence within me and you doubt it.
He is saying to me, I know I am a piece of divine creation and you doubt it. I know I am saturated with God and you doubt it. I know I am imbued with God and you doubt it. I know I am permeated with God and you doubt it. I know I am immersed in God and you doubt it.
He is saying to me, I know I am connected with God and you doubt it. I know I am not separate from God and you doubt it. I know I swim in the ocean that is God and you doubt it. I know God is a container for me just as a glass is a container for water and you doubt it.
The hermit’s message, not to be confused with pantheism, is similar to what Jesus and great Christian writers have said.
Jesus captures the notion of my divinity when he says, “whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him” (John 6:57). The new Roman Missal prays, “Grant that we, who are nourished by the Body and Blood of your Son and filled with his Holy Spirit, may become one body, one spirit in Christ” (p. 653). In addition, St. Paul has a similar teaching when he says, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians, 2:20).
St. Basil the Great, an early church bishop, in his treatise on the Holy Spirit, conveys a similar message when he writes, “Through the Spirit we acquire the likeness to God and abide in God. Indeed, we attain what is beyond our most sublime aspirations. We become God” (Vol.11, Breviary p.976).
St. Thomas Aquinas, who had great devotion to the Eucharist and is known as the doctor of theology, writes eight centuries ago, “Since it was the will of God’s only-begotten Son that we should share in his divinity, he assumed our nature in order that by becoming man he might make us Gods” (Breviary, Vol. 111, p. 610).
So, if I am experiencing fear, worry, anxiety, self-rejection, self-hate or guilt I am denying my divinity. I am forgetting my divinity. I am not living in the belief of my own divinity.
If I am self-downing and if I am self-doubting and if I am self-blaming, then I am forgetting that Jesus has breathed on me and said to me, “receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20: 22). I am forgetting that, like the Apostles and all Christians, I am “filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts of the Apostles 2:3).
Msgr. Thomas J. Morgan is the retired pastor of St. Mary and Thomas More parishes, Cherry Hill.
at the bottom and then tap “Add to Home Screen”