Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Today’s Gospel lesson includes the story, drawn from John’s Gospel (select Morning Prayer), of Jesus receiving baptism by the hand of John the Baptist. In this account, John states that “I myself did not know him,” but that “the one who sent me to baptize with water” made Jesus’ identity clear to him. “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.”

This passage reminds us of Jesus’ words later in John’s Gospel, that “If ye love me, keep my commandments, and I will pray the Father and He will give you another Comforter, even the Spirit of Truth.” That gift of the Spirit, who proceeds from the Father, fell on the Apostles through the request of the Son, manifesting as tongues of fire, “like a mighty rushing wind.”

These Biblical passages present the activity of the Holy Spirit as “breath”, “wind”, “a dove,” and “tongues of fire.” These activities are consonant with the original description of the Spirit of God moving over the waters in the creation account of Genesis 1.

These images doubtless caused later theologians like St John of Damascus to contemplate the Trinity in terms of various word images: as a spring (the Father) that begets a river (the Son) and both are of one nature with a sea (the Spirit); or of the sun (the Father) yielding rays (the Son) and heat (the Spirit).

The activity of the Holy Spirit is evident in all these passages, and that activity is an important topic for artistic representation, such as in Jonathan Harvey’s setting, Come Holy Ghost. This work incorporates aleatoric elements (individual melodic fragments sounding randomly) and temporal augmentation (melodic unfolding at different speeds) as ways to depict the Spirit’s activity at Pentecost.

Yours in Christ,

—Justin