The Holy Spirit, Fire of Divine Love

by Wilfrid Stinissen

  That is why the Christian ethic (the Spirit) makes man free. And again: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17). The one who lets himself be led by the Spirit may do at all times what his heart desires. It is true, he is obeying the will of another, the will of God, but this will has become one with his own longing. He has received a new heart and a new spirit. “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances” (Ezek 36:26–27).

  No one is as free as the one who needs only to satisfy the most burning desire of his heart.

  The more we live in accord with this powerful longing, the more intense it becomes. The Spirit never ceases to sigh. The more he quenches our thirst, the thirstier we become. “In Christianity desire is holy.”4 It is the direct consequence of the Spirit’s presence in man. He is a flowing stream. “The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’. . . And let him who is thirsty come” (Rev 22:17). When the Spirit lives in us, or we in the Spirit, it is then that we begin to “come”.

  “There is a living water in me that speaks”, writes Ignatius of Antioch (d. ca. 110), “and says to me from within: ‘Come to the Father.’ ”5

  This water is the Holy Spirit himself.

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  The Spirit of Love

  The Holy Spirit is love. He and love are identical.

  There is one text in the New Testament that clearly expresses this identity. “And hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). To give us the Holy Spirit and to pour love into our hearts are the same thing for God.

  There are many other clear passages along with this one that point in the same direction. To live in the Spirit and to live in love amount to the same thing for Saint Paul. “The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh” (Gal 5:17). This enmity is nothing other than the enmity between egoism and love. “For these are opposed to each other” (ibid.).

  We speak of the fruitkoinonia of the Spirit. But the original Greek text has “the fruit of the Spirit” in the singular (ho de karpos tou pneumatos) (Gal 5:22). The fruit of the Spirit is love. In this case, the fruit does not differ from the tree. After “love”, one can place a colon. What follows (joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control) are the characteristics of love or the signs of love.

  “And he bowed his head and gave up his spirit” (Jn 19:30). We can assume that Saint John is not thinking merely of the last breath of Jesus here. At the very moment that Jesus dies, he gives his Spirit, which is the Holy Spirit, to the world. He fills the world with the Holy Spirit, with love. When the soldier pierces Jesus’ side with his lance, blood and water flow out (Jn 19:34). Water is a symbol of the Spirit. When love has reached its climax in Jesus—“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15:13)—it pours out and washes over the world in waves.

  Koinonia—Fellowship

  The Holy Spirit is love. But in the First letter of Saint John we read that God is love (ho theos agapē estin) (4:8, 16). Is there no other word besides agape for expressing love, a word that is more characteristic of the Holy Spirit? Yes, the word koinonia. Saint Paul uses it twice in connection with the Holy Spirit. He closes the second letter to the Corinthians with the greeting: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love [agape] of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit [the Greek uses the genitive form: the Holy Spirit’s fellowship]. . . be with you all” (13:14). The liturgy of the Catholic Mass begins with this greeting. In the letter to the Philippians, Saint Paul writes: “So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any incentive of love, any participation in the Spirit [even here it is in the genitive form], any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” (2:1–2).

  It is characteristic of the Holy Spirit to create koinonia, for he himself is koinonia. Koinos is spoken of persons or things that belong together, of things that are shared by many persons. And “koinonia” means fellowship, solidarity, alliance, and interrelatedness. “What koinonia has light with darkness?” asks Saint Paul (2 Cor 6:14). Or in common English: “What fellowship has light with darkness?”.

  What is love? Philosophers, artists, and authors all wrestle with this question. We can say: Love is self-giving. The Greek word agape is translated in this way. Love is to give oneself to another. It is this love that Jesus shows us on the Cross: he gives his life for us. It is also this love that he shows us in the Eucharist, where he is given and poured out—the love that goes completely out of itself, that thinks only of what is best for the other. Amo, volo ut sis, writes Saint Augustine (354–430): I will for you to be, for you to be yourself, I will the best for you, I will to make you happy.

  But love is not only self-giving; it is not only a desire to go out of myself. It is also a desire that the other should come into me. Love is not only agape; it is also eros (which should not necessarily be associated with eroticism). Love is also desire, thirst. “Come!” says eros, “I long for you, we must be together.” In the Eucharist, there is agape as well as eros. The Eucharist is not only sacrifice; it is also presence. We emphasize this in the Catholic Church by preserving the Consecrated Bread in the Tabernacle: he is always with us. In the Eucharist, we find love under both of these aspects.

  When a man and a woman enter into marriage and promise to love each other in good times and bad, it is first of all a question of agape, the sacrificial, self-giving love. “Husbands, love (agapate) your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her” (Eph 5:25). It is difficult to “promise” that one will always be happy with one’s spouse, that he will always be a joy. If the other thinks only of himself, if he is an egoist and tramples on your feelings and does not respect you as a person, he will become a burden and a cause of pain. Then you can no longer say to the other: “You are my joy”, but must say, rather: “You are my cross.” Eros is then reduced to a minimum or to nothing at all. What is left, or what should be left, is agape: that you wait on the other, sacrifice yourself, and pray for him. One can truly promise agape, and if one has done so, it is a question of being faithful.

  We may not make too radical a distinction between agape and eros, however. Experience shows that a person for whom you have greatly suffered and sacrificed becomes dear to you, presupposing that you completely consent to the suffering and sacrifice. If you suffer against your will, you will instead become bitter. As agape grows, eros is usually affected also. But this is not something that can be programmed, and therefore it cannot be promised.

  A love that consists exclusively, or almost exclusively, of agape is not complete. It has been deprived of something important. Therefore, an unhappy marriage is not a true image of the love between Christ and his Church. Where mutuality is lacking, love is not truly itself.

  There is a word that expresses the fullness of love, both agape and eros, and that is koinonia, fellowship, the very word that is typical of the Holy Spirit and that expresses his being. In fellowship, one shares everything in common. Nothing is just yours. “All that is mine is yours”, you say. “And all that is mine is yours”, answers the other. You empty yourself of what is yours in order to fill the other, and that is agape. But by the fact that the other empties himself of what is his in order to fill you, eros is also satisfied. “I am yours”, says agape. “You are mine”, says eros. Is that not what love repeats for all eternity? “I am yours—you are mine”, together, is the fullness of love: koinonia.

  Love is perfect in the Holy Trinity, and its name is koinonia. There a continuous giving and taking is happening at a dizzying speed.

  Saint John of the Cross (1542–1591) describes this fello
wship in an unsurpassed way in a wonderful poem. One feels almost giddy reading it.

  ON CREATION

  My Son, I wish to give You

  A bride who will love You.

  Because of You she will deserve

  To share our company,

  And eat bread at Our table,

  The same bread I eat,

  That she may know the good

  I have in such a Son;

  And rejoice with Me

  In Your grace and fullness.

  The Father does not think of himself when he creates the world and mankind. He wants to give his Son a bride, who will love him. The entire creation is a fantastic gift that the Father gives to the Son. What does the Son do with this gift?

  I am very grateful, Father,

  The Son answered;

  I will show My brightness

  To the bride You give Me.

  So that by it she may see

  How great My Father is,

  And how I have received

  My being from Your being.

  I will hold her in My arms

  And she will burn with Your love,

  And with eternal delight

  She will exalt Your goodness.1

  The Son does not use the Father’s gift for his own joy. If he shows his glory to his bride, it is only so that she will see how he has received it from his Father and so that she will praise the Father’s goodness. All goes back to the Father.

  And the power that moves the Father toward the Son, and the Son toward the Father, is the Holy Spirit. He is the one who does everything between them in fellowship. He is koinonia.

  “You Are the Body of Christ”

  That the Holy Spirit is fellowship should not remain an abstract truth. It can have extremely concrete consequences in our life. He creates community; he brings together. Almost every prayer in the Catholic liturgy ends with in unitate spiritus sancti (in the unity of the Holy Spirit). It is the Spirit who incorporates us all into the Body of Christ and makes us one. “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free” (1 Cor 12:13), (whether we are white or black, priests or laymen, men or women, natives or foreigners, conservatives or progressives).

  And all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. . . . But as it is, God arranged the organs in the body, each one of them, as he chose. . . . Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (ibid., vv. 13–16, 18, 27).

  We are told that we must forgive one another, that we may not bear a grudge, that we should be meek and kind, or, also, in the language of psychology, that we must let down our defenses. All of this is important. But if we regard it as a list of different commands to observe, it will look quite hopeless. Life is far too short to be able to find time for so many things.

  Instead of thinking of rules and regulations, we can be conscious of reality, of the ontological reality. If we know, if we existentially know, that together we make up one Body, we no longer can be angry or envious of one another. The ears are not envious of the eyes, nor are the eyes envious of the ears. When one part of the body suffers, the remaining part does not feel malicious pleasure, but, rather, the entire body mobilizes to help the suffering part. “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together” (1 Cor 12:26).

  When we say that we are siblings, brothers and sisters, that is already something great. It is better to call each other brother and sister than to speak of our “fellowmen”. We belong to the same family. “Every one who loves the parent loves the one begotten by him” (1 Jn 5:1). But the reality is still greater and deeper. We are bound to each other more than siblings in a family. Siblings are relatively independent of each other. Each of them lives his own life and goes his own ways. But in a body, all are dependent on everyone.

  Everything becomes so simple when we live in the truth. To forgive is no longer something magnificent, making us feel proud of ourselves. To forgive is obvious. Or rather, there is hardly anything to forgive. The arm does not forgive the leg because it is broken. When the prodigal son returns to the Father, the Father does not say in a solemn way: “My son, I forgive you.” He does not even give the son a chance to finish his repentant confession. “His father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him” (Lk 15:20). He immediately brings him back to the level where they are one with each other. Love makes sins invisible (1 Pet 4:8). Forgiveness is not necessary, since love hides the sins.

  To live on that level where the Spirit joins us together, making us one body, is not something that demands great effort. We do not need to seek the Holy Spirit. When we pray: “Come, Holy Spirit!” we ought to think in our inmost self: “I am coming to you, Holy Spirit.” He is always here, and he fills us as soon as we open ourselves to him.

  There is a story of a famous Zen master who one day went in search of his body. His disciples found this rather amusing, and understandably so. We are equally amusing when we look for God! We are more in God than we are in our body.

  Love Fills the World

  The Spirit makes all mankind into one body. But he flows not only through mankind, he flows through the entire cosmos. “The spirit of the Lord has filled the world” (Wis 1:7). He creates fellowship even there.

  We know how the negatively charged electrons revolve around the positively charged nucleus of the atom. And we know how the earth rotates around the sun with the average speed of 18.5 miles per second. We also know that since the Big Bang, around fifteen billion years ago, the universe has been expanding in all directions with an incredible speed. But something we have known only since 1986 is that all the galaxies are racing together through space in the direction of something great and mysterious, which still lies beyond the horizon of astronomers. There seems to be a strong and inexplicable current running through the universe. It is drawing with it the earth, the Milky Way, all the galaxies and clusters of galaxies. All of them are rushing at breakneck speed—435 miles per second—in the same direction. No one knows why, but in an unknown and remote distance, there is clearly something that is irresistibly drawing this enormous mass of matter toward itself.2

  We see how love exists on all levels—in the human person, in the microcosm, and in the macrocosm. An incredible longing for oneness is moving through all of creation.

  Love Is a Person

  The Holy Spirit is love, and love is the Holy Spirit. Love is a person. Even this can become concrete for us. If love is the Holy Spirit, then you know that you are in contact with him when you live in love. Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est (Where there is love, there is God). As soon as you begin to love, you are living in the atmosphere of God.

  At the same time, you realize that it now becomes easier to love. You do not need to do it yourself. There is no need to strain or force yourself to have beautiful feelings. It is the Spirit who loves in you, and it is enough that you let him in.

  In the end, love becomes more personal. It issues forth from a Person, a divine Person, and therefore it also makes the human being a person. Love is not a diffuse, impersonal force but, rather, a “personalizing” force. The love that is the Holy Spirit makes you who you are. And when you become an instrument of the Spirit and allow him to work in you, you in your turn help others to become real persons. The Spirit unites, but without erasing differences. On the contrary, he brings out the differences and makes them evident. I become more who I am, and you become more who you are, which enables us to have deep, personal relationships.

  Is this not the hallmark of Christian love, that it is extremely personal and gives rise to deep, personal bonds of friendship? In Buddhism it is different. It seems that the personal disappears
into the universal. One gets the impression that one is loved, not for one’s own sake, but, rather, for the sake of one’s universal nature and that one could just as easily be exchanged for someone else. Such a relationship cannot fully satisfy us. You wish to be loved, not because you are a human being, but because you are you.

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  The Spirit of Truth

  “I have yet many things to say to you,” says Jesus, “but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (Jn 16:12–13). We do not have the whole truth from the beginning. We grow in the truth. And the one who directs this growth process is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth.

  The Spirit of Jesus

  Since Jesus is the truth (Jn 14:6), the Spirit of truth is the Spirit of Jesus.

  The Spirit rests upon him more than on all the prophets. “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Lk 4:18; cf. Is 61:1).

  The other prophets, including the greatest of all, John the Baptist, received their call from the Spirit. Jesus receives his conception from the Holy Spirit—all that he is (Lk 1:35). Those signs that previously revealed the Spirit: authority, power, miracles, and faithful communion with God are manifold in him. Or to be more exact, they become the normal environment. Miracles come forth from the hands of Jesus in a completely natural way. He does not receive merely a certain insight about the mysteries of God. He is always with God. No one has had the Spirit to the same degree as he has, nor has anyone had the Spirit in the same way. We cannot say that Jesus was inspired. The Spirit comes over kings and prophets as an unknown power. They know they are seized by someone greater than themselves. This is not so with Jesus. With him one sees nothing of an external coercion. He does God’s work; he lives in God; and it seems almost as though he does not need the Holy Spirit.