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You Always Resist the Holy Spirit (Acts7:51) Cenacle 4/22/21  “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit.” Acts 7:51. St. Stephen, like Moses (Ex Ch 33-34), calls the Israelites “stiff-necked people.” They think they are God’s people because they are circumcised in the flesh, but Stephen points out that they have uncircumcised hearts. That is why they resist the Holy Spirit. The same is true for us. To be able to receive the Holy Spirit, our hearts must first be circumcised.   God has given His mustard seed The Simple Path as the path for the circumcision of our hearts. This is the only way to become and grow as God’s people. A circumcised heart is open, exposed, and docile to the guidance of the Holy Spirit that can then take us into the Kingdom of God (JN 3:5), into the Holy of Holies, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to be consumed in the Trinity.  It is the heart within us, not the exterior flesh, that needs to be circumcised. That is why God has not formed us with many exterior practices, such as endless novenas, consecrations, 40-day fasts, etc. It does not mean that we do not benefit from those practices. In fact, to begin The Simple Path, we prepare for 33 days for our consecration to Mary. Many in our community are consecrating themselves to St. Joseph. All these are indeed beneficial but are not enough.  The Pharisees had many exterior practices, many prayers, cleansing rituals, fasts ... yet, Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, calls them “stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in the heart that resist the Holy Spirit.” In our broken humanity, we can perform many exterior pious practices and live opposing the Holy Spirit because, interiorly, our hearts remain hardened and in darkness.  All of us, to some extent, resist the Holy Spirit because of our self-willfulness, even though we are not conscious of it. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.” Mt 23:25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth.” Mt 23:27 “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.” Mt 15:8-9 To live totally docile to the Holy Spirit with no resistance is to accept all, the good and the bad that comes to us, with complete abandonment and trust. This is to live in the will of God. We can only do this when we believe in God’s love for us, expressed in His passion and Cross.  “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Jn 3:8 JN 6:35 “I am the bread of life, he who comes to me shall not hunger and he who believes in me shall never thirst.”  It is beautiful and significant that the Church united these two scripture passages, Acts 7:51 and Jn 6:35, in the liturgy of the Mass. What do they have in common? In order for us to believe that Christ IS the Bread of Life, we each must ALLOW the Holy Spirit to circumcise our hearts. The Holy Spirit desires to prepare our hearts so that the “Bread of Life” can enter our hearts.  The Holy Spirit desires to empty our hearts so that the “Bread of Life” can fill our hearts.  The Holy Spirit, according to our docility, consumes us in Himself so that we can love and desire Jesus Eucharist with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. The Holy Spirit is the Person of the Trinity that performs the circumcision of our hearts, thus preparing our hearts to be transformed through Jesus Eucharist into His living hosts. “He who believes” (Jn 6:35)  What is required?...