At Mass this weekend our opening prayer reminds us that the Spirit is the one who is given to us and that the Spirit will guide us to our promised inheritance. Certainly, this Holy Spirit is hard to pin down or see or recognize most of the time. For us to sense the presence of the Spirit of God requires us to become quiet, centered, and focused. None of this is easy for us as our heads are often filled with flashy lights and booming sounds.

In our first reading, we learn that the prophet Elijah, with a very open mind, was willing to wait for the Lord to appear in some form or way. Recall that the great appearance of the Lord on Mount Sinai was accompanied by great rumbling of thunder and gobs of thick smoke. It made sense that Elijah would be right to expect some dramatic natural event to signal the Lord’s presence. We learn instead that God was not in the earthquake nor in the mighty wind nor in the fire; he was, instead, in the quietest possible breeze. We are happy to learn that Elijah discovers the Lord’s appearance and responds to it. Elijah, who never writes a word, is indeed a man of God for he was in the Lord’s presence and he knew it. Clearly he is a prophet worth listening to and heeding.