Encountering the Spirit means experiencing positive joy and peace. In short it means transformation into a balanced life, a Christ like life. The Holy Spirit is always consistent with what Jesus lived and taught. That is why I call Jesus a Spirit person.
The positive joy and peace of encountering the Spirit is found in hearing the Word of God as living, convicting word in your heart. It is the joy of knowing it as your daily guiding norm and deriving your sense of security from that.
This joy and peace is also coming alive through honest prayer. It is learning to listen with confidence and in silence with the expectation of hearing what you most need to hear to be transformed into the image of Christ.
Knowing the Spirit is progressing in freedom, freedom to give your life away in service without fear of ever losing it. It is feeling an increasing solidarity with the poor, dirty suffering and oppressed. I believe that it is feeling it also with the animal kingdom and asking prophetic questions such as, “What does the crowding, stuffing for slaughter or production, and constant drugging of animals on factory farms do to the human spirit.” Is not “the righteous man still known by how he cares for his beasts?” (Proverbs). And is it not strange that in our mythical creation and origin stories of Genesis both man and animal were commanded to be vegetarians? Also, there I find the bloodlust that led to the judgment of the flood seems to be connected in these stories to man’s lust for fresh butchered meat on the grill. What is there in these stories to teach of our relation to non-human creatures?
Finally, my experience is that encountering the Spirit does lead us into maturity in thankfulness and joy. How can one sense the presence of the Divine Spirit within and all around with all His beautiful Mystery and not be joyfully thankful for the privilege of participating in life. I also find it true that joy of participating with others in the process of spiritual growth is renewed with the intaking of Christ in every Eucharist.



