The Holy Spirit, Fire of Divine Love

by Wilfrid Stinissen

  The Holy Spirit teaches us that God cannot resist our poverty. In this way he imparts to us the art of making the most of our poverty and, eventually, also of loving it.

  A New Presence of Jesus

  The Holy Spirit also comforts in another way. When Jesus is about to leave his disciples, he says: “But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts” (Jn 16:5–6). Jesus knows better than his disciples what he means in their lives and how desolate life will be without him. “If I go, I will send him [the Comforter] to you” (Jn 16:7).

  How will the Comforter comfort? Not by replacing Jesus’ presence with his own presence, not by being with us in Jesus’ place. But, rather, by making Jesus present to us in a new way. Thanks to the Holy Spirit, Jesus will be even more present than before. He will not only be with us, he will be in us. “A little while, and you will see me no more; again a little while, and you will see me” (Jn 16:16). Thanks to the Holy Spirit, the disciples will, after “a little while”, see Jesus again, not with their physical eyes, but with an inner gaze that is enlightened by the Holy Spirit.

  The Spirit is not a substitute for Jesus. He makes Jesus’ presence even more real. “I will not leave you desolate”, says Jesus, “I will come to you” (Jn 14:18). It is Jesus himself who comes in and through the Holy Spirit.

  The Eucharist is a synthesis of the whole Christian life. It also shows us more clearly than anything else that it is the Spirit who makes Jesus present. Just as God becomes man in Mary’s womb by the Holy Spirit (Lk 1:35), so bread and wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ by the Spirit. In the prayer that is called the epiclesis (epikaleō means to call), the Church prays that the Holy Spirit will bring about this transformation. “Therefore, O Lord, we pray: may this same Holy Spirit graciously sanctify these offerings, that they may become the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.”3

  When the Spirit comes, he never says “Here I am.” He says “Here is Jesus.” He comforts by making Jesus present.

  Perhaps the comfort we try to give to others would be more effective if we did as he does!

  “How Beautiful You Are, My Beloved!”

  We are comforted by the Spirit in yet another way. He teaches us to find our joy in God.

  Is that not what characterizes love more than anything else: that one finds joy in the beloved, that one is happy because of the beloved? “Thank you for existing” is an expression one often hears nowadays [in Scandinavia]. It has become almost a cliché. But the one who really means what he says gives expression to real love. It gives me joy that you exist. You are beautiful, you are wonderful, you are precious. In the Gloria at Mass, we sing: “We praise you for your glory.”

  It is the Holy Spirit who gives our love this quality, and without this, it is not real love.

  I can be generous, pious, self-sacrificing, and eager. I can work myself to death in service of the Church. But if I do not find joy in God, if he is not my great joy, something very essential is missing in my love. If I give God my money, my work, my time, I give what I have. But if I want to give him myself, what I am, there must be something more. He must be my joy, for nothing is so much myself as my joy. Tell me where you find joy, and I will tell you who you are. “For where your treasure is, there will your heart [what you truly are] be also” (Mt 6:21).

  The Spirit creates in us the joy that is characteristic of the kingdom of God. “For the kingdom of God does not mean food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17). His deepest and most important work in us is to make us become fascinated with God’s beauty, so that we cease to find our joy in ourselves and instead find it in God. He brings about that Copernican revolution in our life, so that we no longer let God revolve around us (God for me), but, rather, we begin to revolve around God (me for God). According to Saint Paul, it is the Holy Spirit who intoxicates us and causes us to sing and play before the Lord with all our hearts (Eph 5:18–19).

  One day, in the year 1582, Saint John of the Cross asked his spiritual daughter Francisca of the Mother of God, a Carmelite nun in Beas, what she did during prayer. “I behold God’s beauty”, answered Francisca. “I am happy that he is so beautiful.” John of the Cross was happy and enthusiastic. A few days later he gave to Francisca the last five stanzas he had newly composed of the Spiritual Canticle. They begin with these lines:

  Let us rejoice, Beloved,

  And let us go forth to behold

  ourselves in Your beauty.4

  To love God is to find joy in him. All religions have, at least in their best moments, realized this. The entire Psalter is permeated with this joy in and about God. “I say to the Lord, ‘You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you’ ” (Ps 16:2). “When I awake, I shall be satisfied with beholding your form” (Ps 17:15). “Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Ps 37:4).

  The entire Psalm 119 is a long, drawn-out song of praise to the Lord’s law and, thus, to the Lord himself. “In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches” (v. 14). “I will delight in your statutes” (v. 16). “Your testimonies are my delight” (v. 24). “For I find my delight in your commandments, which I love” (v. 47). “Their heart is gross like fat, but I delight in your law” (v. 70). “If your law had not been my delight, I should have perished in my affliction” (v. 92). We could say that there are two choices: to find delight in God or to perish in one’s misery!

  This joy for God’s sake becomes even greater in Christianity. Thanks to Jesus, we have received a deeper insight into God’s being. “All that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you”, he says (Jn 15:15). Now we know more of the endless bliss that the Father and the Son find in each other, which is the Holy Spirit. We are invited to share in this bliss and find our joy in their joy.

  It is the Spirit who awakens this joy in us. He wants us to grow in it so that in the end the promise of Jesus will be fulfilled: “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (Jn 15:11).

  The Way of Gratitude

  How can we cooperate with the Holy Spirit and let joy, and thus him, for he is joy, fill us?

  There is a king’s highway that leads directly to the goal, and that is gratitude. It is unthinkable that one could be grateful and unhappy at the same time. The remarkable thing about gratitude is that it naturally and almost automatically grows and tends toward an ever greater unselfishness. It begins rather egocentrically: I have received a gift that makes me happy. My gratitude is kindled by the fact that one of my needs has been satisfied, that one of my wishes has been fulfilled.

  But as soon as I begin to give thanks, my attention, which was at first fixed on myself, turns toward my benefactor, God. The emphasis, which before was on me, is transplanted little by little into God. I thank you because you have given me. I thank you because you are so good to me. I thank you because you are so good that it could occur to you to think of me. I thank you because you are so wonderful.

  I become more and more freed from myself and ever more fascinated by God’s love and beauty.

  It begins with me and ends with you. “Behold, you are beautiful, my love, behold, you are beautiful!” (Song 4:1).

  Again, it is the Eucharist that gives us a splendid example of this progressive shift from man to God, from the gift to the Giver. We begin the Eucharistic Prayer thanking God for creating us, for in his mercy coming to the help of all people, for sending his Son to save us.

  But it always ends with the great doxology (praise), in which man, in total forgetfulness of himself, is completely absorbed in God’s glory: “Through him, and with him, and in him, O God, almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, for ever and ever.”

  As a Mother

  To comfort is a typically motherly task. The Bible itself likens God's attitude to
ward us to that of a mother when it wants to explain how he comforts us: “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you” (Is 66:13).

  Many saints have discovered something motherly in the Holy Spirit’s way of being and acting. When Gregory Nazianzen (ca. 330–389) read that “The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” (Gen 1:2) [New International Version, 1984], he spontaneously thought of a hen that sits and broods on her eggs. “The Holy Spirit”, writes Saint Catherine of Siena (1347–1380), “becomes [for those who surrender themselves to God’s providence] a mother, who nourishes them in the divine womb.”

  Iconography also gives witness to the Spirit’s motherly and feminine role. In the Carthusian monastery in Burgos (Miraflores), one can admire an image of the Holy Trinity where the Holy Spirit is depicted in feminine form.

  We speak of “mater ecclesia”, our Mother the Church. When we sing Psalm 87, we praise the Church for being a mother to the people: “The LORD records as he registers the peoples, ‘This one was born there.’ Singers and dancers alike say, ‘All my springs are in you’ ” (6–7). “But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother”, writes Saint Paul about the Church (Gal 4:26). And the Book of Revelation describes the Church as a woman who gives birth to the whole people of God (12:17). But the Spirit is so indissolubly bound to the Church that almost everything we say about the Church can also be said about the Spirit. If the Church is a mother, it is because she is filled with the Holy Spirit. We are always born simultaneously of the Spirit and the Church. The first Christians considered the waters of baptism, where the Holy Spirit regenerates and renews us (Tit 3:5), as the womb of the Church.

  The fact that water is one of the most important symbols of the Spirit points in the same direction. Humanity has always regarded water as an image of the life-giving mother. We see this already in the book of Genesis: “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures”, God says (1:20). In the New Testament, these words take on a whole new relevance. The waters of baptism truly bring forth an abundance of living creatures: all of us! And Jesus speaks of water and the Holy Spirit in the same breath: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (Jn 3:5).

  God is neither man nor woman, neither masculine nor feminine. But the fact that he has created man in his image and likeness must mean that there are similarities between himself and the human person. And that likeness, as the Bible itself stresses, is just that distinction between man and woman. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27). That Jesus is a man we know because he speaks of himself as “the Son”. And since “he is the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15), he calls the one whom he represents Father and not Mother.

  But the motherly aspect is not absent in God. It is especially the Holy Spirit who represents it. It is in the Spirit that the Father begets his Son and all the brothers and sisters of the Son. The little preposition in, which both the Bible and the Church persistently use when it is a question of the Spirit and his work, speaks a clear language. The Spirit is the womb of God, he is the great womb in which all life begins, germinates, and grows. “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life.”

  Every woman is called to make something of the Holy Spirit visible in her life. It is the woman’s task in the Church to be a life giver like the Spirit. We know that in practice this is so and that it is also statistically proven that “spirituality” is woman’s strong point.

  Be Yourself a Comforter!

  A person who lets himself be comforted by the Spirit becomes in turn a comforter. Saint Paul has a convincing text about this: He (God) “comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Cor 1:4).

  If the Spirit comforts you, it is not only so that you will be comforted, but so that his comfort will be extended to others.

  The world has perhaps never been in such great need of a “comforter”. We ought to have a holy ambition to be a comforter like the Spirit. But we may not forget that we can only comfort “with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God”. If our comfort is of our own making, it will have no deep and lasting effect. If we are not ourselves reconciled with God and life, we cannot help others. Then our “comfort” will only be an agreement with the complaints and grumbling of others, and the result will be endless complaining and grumbling.

  One becomes a true “comforter” when one mediates something of the acceptance he has himself experienced from God. “Welcome one another, therefore, as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God” (Rom 15:7). Saint Paul also exhorts us to: “Bear one another’s burdens”, (Gal 6:2). We bear the burden of another person first of all by accepting him as he is. It is not things and circumstances that make up man’s heaviest burden, it is he himself. Man is himself a burden by the fact that he does not want to be who he is.

  If, then, a “comforter” comes along who accepts him, with his limitations, weaknesses, and failures, it will be easier for him to accept himself. If the “comforter” himself has received peace from knowing he is accepted and affirmed by God, he will be able to pass on that peace and say with Jesus: My peace I give to you (Jn 14:27).

  5

  The Spirit, Your Spiritual Director

  Many complain and lament that they have not succeeded in finding a spiritual director. But it is the Holy Spirit who is our spiritual director, and apart from him no one else is.

  Director and “Companion”

  These directors [says Saint John of the Cross] should reflect that they themselves are not the chief agent, guide, and mover of souls in this matter, but that the principal guide is the Holy Spirit, Who is never neglectful of souls, and that they are instruments for directing them to perfection through faith and the law of God, according to the spirit God gives each one.

  Thus the director’s whole concern should not be to accommodate souls to his own method and condition, but he should observe the road along which God is leading them, and if he does not recognize it, he should leave them alone and not bother them.1

  It would be more correct to speak of a spiritual “companion”. His task is not to lead—that is the work of the Holy Spirit—but rather to accompany the person who has confided in him and help him listen to the Spirit and recognize his impulses. It is truly a difficult task, and it demands much self-denial on the part of the spiritual “companion”. It is tempting to think that one’s own path will be suitable for others and that the methods that have been helpful in one’s own life will also be helpful to others. But this is not so. What is helpful for one may be harmful to another.

  For this reason, the “companion” finds himself in a very delicate position and can feel extremely poor. There are no ready-made ideas or recipes on which to fall back. When he goes to the confessional or the visiting room, he ought to be completely empty. He knows nothing except this: that now it is a question of listening attentively to what the Spirit wants with just this person.

  True Freedom: To Be Bound by the Spirit

  “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God”, writes Saint Paul (Rom 8:14). One is not living as a child of God if he does not allow himself to be led by the Spirit.

  Perhaps this is difficult to understand in our day when freedom and liberty are spoken of so ardently. And rightly so! Even the Second Vatican Council speaks enthusiastically about man’s freedom:

  For its part, authentic freedom is an exceptional sign of the divine image within man. For God has willed that man remain “under the control of his own decisions,” so that he can seek his Creator spontaneously, and come freely to utter and blissful perfection through loyalty to Him. Hence man’s dignity demands that he act according to a knowing and free choice that is personally motivated and prompted from within, not under blind internal impulse nor by mere exte
rnal pressure.”2

  True freedom does not exclude the fact that one is led by another. The decisive question is: By whom or by what are we led? Are we led by blind impulses, or are we led from within, from a level that lies even deeper than what we usually call the unconscious? “The soul’s center is God”, writes Saint John of the Cross.3 No one is so truly himself, no one lives so authentically, genuinely, and freely, as the one who lets himself be led by God, who lives in the center of the soul. To live from one’s center is the greatest freedom.

  The Obvious Obedience

  Is it not in the very nature of love to let oneself be led by the beloved? The one who loves does not wish to live for himself; he thinks only of making the beloved happy. He wishes to know what the beloved wants and desires. The word “obedience” has received an unpleasant and hard ring to it, and since the time of Freud (1856–1939) it is often associated with repression and a threatening superego. But it was not that way originally. Obedience is a loving listening that is translated into action. It is an effective and active listening. For the one who loves, it is obvious that he listens to his beloved.

  One can even say that “obedience” belongs to human nature. One cannot be a whole person if he refuses to listen and obey. It is part of our nature to be related to others. It is not wrong to speak of independence, as is so commonly done nowadays, as long as one realizes that independence, inner strength, is found in and through relationships.

  A person is healthy to the extent that he can go out of himself. One has only to think of the body and its organs. The body points away from itself. If the body is healthy, it is not reminded of itself. The body is made in such a way that it makes relationships with others possible. Only a sick body draws attention to itself. And everyone knows that a body that is pampered and spoiled will be a poor instrument and will have very little resistance against illness and disease.