The Holy Spirit, Fire of Divine Love

by Wilfrid Stinissen

  You can think of your eyes, which, more than any other part of your body, are spiritualized matter. Your very personality shines forth from this synthesis of spirit and matter that your eyes are. In the same way, the “mind” of Christ also shines forth (Phil 2:5) in feelings that are permeated by the Spirit. This is very evident in certain holy people. With Mother Teresa of Calcutta, for example, one had a strong sense that the kindness and tenderness she showed to the poor was more than ordinary, human kindness. It had a transcendent character, an eternal dimension. She seemed to love with a love that was not merely her own.

  When you surrender yourself to the Holy Spirit, most things in your life become transformed, and that includes your feelings, presuming that you have them. This last point is important. Contact with your heart, and with the Spirit who lives in it, does not automatically heal a stunted emotional life. Experience shows that there are holy people who lack a radiance because the “exit ramps” are blockaded. They have a rich inner life, but it is not outwardly visible.

  A strong radiance is, of course, not the most important thing in your life, but we ought not to pass over it. Jesus has said that our light must shine before men, so that they will praise the Father in heaven (Mt 5:16).

  II

  THE SPIRIT AND THE CHURCH

  1

  The Church as Koinonia

  In the Creeds, the article of faith about the Church is always in connection with the article about the Holy Spirit. In the Apostles’ Creed it reads: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church. . . .” The Nicene Creed speaks in a more detailed way about the Holy Spirit, but also there, the article about the Church follows immediately after the article about the Holy Spirit. “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.”

  Both the Creeds are Trinitarian in structure:

  I believe in one God, the Father almighty. . . .

  I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God. . . .

  I believe in the Holy Spirit. . . .

  Each Person has his own “work”: The Father is the source of creation; the Son, of salvation; and the Spirit, of sanctification. He is the Sanctifier, the one who makes holy. And he makes holy primarily through the Church. She is his temple, as Saint Augustine says.

  The Spirit, the Co-founder of the Church

  In his monumental book about the Holy Spirit, Father Yves Congar writes: “The Church is created by the Holy Spirit. He is her co-founder.”1

  The Church is founded by both Jesus and the Holy Spirit. According to Saint Irenaeus (ca. 130–200), the Son and the Spirit are the Father’s two hands. Together they form man into the image of God, and together they found the Church.

  It is often said that the Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church. This image is beautiful, but it is misleading. It seems to imply that the Church received her body (her external organization and structure) from Christ and her soul from the Holy Spirit. No, the Spirit is also involved in the building up of the Church’s body. It is he who leads and inspires the apostles to organize and give structure to the ministries in the Church in their three aspects: the ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons. It is he who leads the Church when she decides how the different sacraments should be formulated and distributed.

  When we read the description of man’s creation in the Book of Genesis, it can give the impression that God first formed his body and then breathed life breath into his nostrils (2:7). It was not so with the Church. The Spirit did not come after Jesus had put everything in order. He was there from the beginning. He was already there when Jesus said to Peter that on this rock he would build his Church (Mt 16:18). It is the Spirit who moved Jesus to say those words.

  It is inspiring to discover this cooperation between the Son and the Spirit in the founding of the Church, to see how together they restore fallen mankind and thereby glorify the Father.

  The Church as Koinonia

  I have pointed out that the word that best characterizes the Holy Spirit’s being is koinonia (fellowship). Since the Church is “created by the Holy Spirit”, it is not unusual that she reflects something of the Spirit’s being, that is, of koinonia. It is a fact that just in our time, at least in Catholic circles, theologians are having recourse more and more to the concept of koinonia in order to understand and describe the essence of the Church.

  The Church is such a rich and complex reality that she can be defined in many ways. One can use different images and ideas to describe her reality. The Church has been called the original sacrament or the sacrament of salvation (she is the sign of God’s saving intervention), the assembly of God, the People of God, God’s kingdom on earth, the Body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit.

  Before the council, and especially after 1943, when Pope Pius XII wrote the encyclical Mystici Corporis, the Church was often spoken of as the Body of Christ. This imagery comes from Saint Paul (Eph 1:23, 1 Cor 12). The advantage of this image was that it laid emphasis on the deep union between the Risen Lord and the Church. The disadvantage of this image, however, was that the metaphor could easily lead to, and in practice did lead to, an all too hierarchical and monarchical concept of the Church. Just as the body has a head that directs it completely, so the Church has a head, Jesus Christ, who, when it is a question of the visible Church, however, acts through his “vicar”, the pope.

  In our time, this is called a pyramidal model of the Church: the Church is like a pyramid with a wide base and sides extending upward to a point.

  The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) reacted against this all too hierarchical concept of the Church and spoke preferably of the Church as “the People of God”. In the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (1964), the chapter on the Church as the People of God (2) was placed before the chapter on the Church’s hierarchical structure and the office of bishops (3). This was something that marked a Copernican revolution in the Church. The keyword was participatio (participation). All take part in the building up of the Church.

  Twenty years after the council, the pope invoked an extraordinary synod of bishops (November 24–December 8, 1985) to evaluate the council’s influence on the life of the Church. Now it is said that a one-sided emphasis on the Church as the People of God has its risks as well. It is lamented that this expression has sometimes received an ideological interpretation and has led to an overly sociological understanding of the Church.

  Gustavo Gutierrez, the founder of Liberation Theology, himself admits that it is no longer fitting to speak of an Iglesia popular (a people’s Church). In the beginning, this was meant to indicate that the Church is, first of all, for the poor. Eventually the word became misused, however, and came to be interpreted in a Marxist sense (all power to the people). The synod’s bishops stress that we must place the accent once again on the mystery of the Church and that the Church must first of all be regarded as communio (the Latin word for koinonia).

  If the Church understands herself, not only as the People of God, but also as koinonia, it will be easier to overcome the dualism between the Church as a social, historical reality and the Church as mystery. By considering the Church as koinonia, the interior and the exterior of the Church are joined. Koinonia means, not only the fellowship that the faithful have among themselves, but also the fellowship between the faithful and God.

  We understand that the Church is filled with the Holy Spirit by the fact that she receives the same name as his and is an image of the koinonia that he brings about; what he is in the Holy Trinity.

  To say the Church is koinonia is also an answer to a deep longing in man. “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Gen 2:18). Even the ancient philosophers defined man as zōon politikon, a living being who is directed toward others and who can develop only in a polis, in a city or state, together with others.


  If the Church could make people realize that she has an answer to their deepest desire for fellowship, she would recover a greater power to draw people to herself.

  The Church, an Icon of the Trinity

  Christianity has inherited monotheism from Judaism: I believe in one God. The Christian Church believes, at the same time, that God has revealed himself in history as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is both one and three. The Christian tradition has tried to express this apparent contradiction by speaking of one nature in God and three Persons. That God is triune means that we must think of him, not as being alone, but as fellowship, family, friendship. It also means that unity does not exclude diversity.

  Just as the two natures in the Person of Jesus Christ, the divine and the human, are not confused or separated,2 in the same way the three divine Persons cannot be confused or separated because of the divine nature that all three of them share. The fact that they cannot be separated is unity; the fact that they cannot be confused is diversity.

  We tend to think that unity and diversity are opposites of each other. But unity is actually the basis and condition for diversity. We see that in our human relationships.

  A superficial, selfish love does not respect the beloved’s right to be his own person, to be different. The superficial love says “I, I” and forces the other to be a part of his “I”. Deep, genuine love, on the other hand, accepts and respects the other and lets him be who he is. There is a maximum experience of the other as another. He is he, and I am I. In deep love, one says “you, you”. There is no confusing or mixing.

  So it is not surprising that an absolute unity makes an absolute diversity possible. The Father and the Son stand diametrically opposite each other. The Father is God in the Father’s way, and the Son is God in the Son’s way.

  Since God’s deepest mystery is fellowship, the purpose of God becoming man on earth was to introduce us once more into this divine communion of life. Before Jesus returns to his Father, he prays that we all may be one as the Father and the Son are one (Jn 17:21).

  The reason for proclaiming the Gospel is to establish this fellowship. “That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 Jn 1:3).

  Just as man is created in the image of the Trinity (Gen 1:27), so the Church as a whole is also an image, an icon of the Trinity. The Church on earth reflects the mystery of the Trinity, namely, unity in diversity. The communion of the Church has its origin in the communion of the Trinity. We call the Church “the Communion of Saints”. We could give the same name to the Holy Trinity. The Trinity is “the Communion of Saints” par excellence, but it is imaged and made visible in the communion of the Church. And just as in the Trinity, the Father and the Son are one in the Holy Spirit, so the Church is also one in the Holy Spirit. It is he who brings about koinonia. Without him, there is only division.

  How Does the Church Reveal the Trinity?

  It is fascinating to consider the Church as an icon of the Trinity. I will try to specify in what way the Church represents the koinonia of the Trinity.

  1. Just as unity in God is the basis and condition for diversity, so unity also comes first within the Church.

  It is not the individual members who bring about unity; rather, they receive unity as a gift from God’s hand. They are taken up into a koinonia that already exists.

  Is it not the same in the body? One cannot bring together head, arms, legs, and heart and make them into a body. The unity of the body comes first. An arm can only be an arm if it accepts being part of the body. We are not the ones who must make the Church one—she is one from the beginning, because she is Christ’s “body, the fulness of him who fills all in all” (Eph 1:23).

  If we are not one, it is because we have distanced ourselves from the Body of Christ and are no longer filled with his fullness.

  2. Just as God is a community of three Persons, so the Church is a community of many local churches, and every local church is a community made up of many believing persons.

  God is Father, Son, and Spirit; and the one Catholic Church is the community made up of all the local churches. God is simultaneously one and triune; in the same way, the Church is one and many.

  3. Just as the three divine Persons can neither be confused one with the other nor separated, neither can the local churches, whose koinonia corresponds to that of Christ’s Church, be fused together or separated.

  Each local church has its own personality that should be respected. In the Catholic Church, the bishop is head of his diocese, who receives his authority directly from Christ and not from the pope. He does not lead his diocese as the pope’s delegate. He is directly appointed by Christ. The Catholic Church is not an absolute monarchy, where the pope alone has all the power and shares some of his power with the bishops according to his own good pleasure.

  When the pope’s role is overemphasized at the cost of the bishops’ role, we can speak of a fusion of the local churches. Then they are no longer “persons”, like the three divine Persons, but are treated instead as underaged children. This risk existed especially during the time period between the First and Second Vatican Councils. Due to the war (1870), which forced the Council Fathers to adjourn before they had had time to address the role of bishops in the Church, the First Vatican Council addressed the role of the pope in a one-sided way. Thus a certain imbalance arose, which led to an overly monarchical (autocratic) view of the Church.

  The Orthodox Church and, in an even greater way, the Protestant churches are subject to the risk of overemphasizing the autonomy of the local churches at the cost of the Church’s universality. There is certainly diversity here, but there is a risk of lessening unity and, on a certain level, of it disappearing. Instead of fusion, there is divorce.

  This shows how important it is to have a correct idea of God. If we have a one-sided, monotheistic conception of God (for example, if we speak of one God but never of three Persons), we are almost inevitably led to a one-sided, autocratic view of the Church, which leads us to think only of unity and universality. If, on the other hand, we emphasize the three divine Persons in a one-sided way, there is the danger of unity being lost.

  With God it is always a question of both/and. As soon as we stress one element at the cost of the other, it results in error.

  4. Just as obedience and love go together within the Holy Trinity, they also go together in the Church.

  The Son obeys the Father; he is subordinate to the Father. There is a “hierarchy” in the Trinity. The Father is first. “For the Father is greater than I”, says Jesus (Jn 14:28). But he also says: “I and the Father are one” (Jn 10:30). That he is the second Person, and not the first, does not mean that he has less value. He has the same divine nature.

  It is the same in the Church. She is a koinonia of love, but that does not exclude a hierarchy, a superior level and a subordinate level, where one leads and the other obeys. The one who obeys should not feel as though he were less. He has the same value as the one who leads.

  Is it not ridiculous to feel humiliated that we are called to obey, when God himself obeys God? Obedience is divine. If we feel that we are wronged because we have not received a higher position, we ought to meditate more on the Holy Trinity!

  The communal life of the Trinity is thus both the source and goal of the Church’s fellowship. The Second Vatican Council describes the Church with a quotation from Saint Cyprian (ca. 200–258). The Universal Church is seen to be: “a people made one with the unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit”.3

  This vertical, mystical dimension of the Church seems perhaps abstract and too exalted and distant in relation to the concrete reality we find of division and rivalry. Nevertheless, that is the true reality of the Church. There are many Christians who consciously live in this koinonia with their brothers and sisters and with the Holy Trinity. Without this dimension, the cloistered contemplative lif
e would have no meaning at all, because it is built on the “Communion of Saints”.

  If more Christians discovered this dimension, there would soon be an end to division and the Church would show to the world, even externally, that she is a community of love—an image and icon of the community of love that exists between the Father and the Son and that is the Holy Spirit.

  The Sacrament of Fellowship

  In the Catholic Church we speak, not of “sacramental bread”, but of Communion. We say: “I go to Communion.” It is a significant expression. When I receive the Body of Christ, I go to koinonia.

  It is, above all, in and through the Eucharist that the Church becomes herself: the Communion of Saints. It is there that fellowship is realized and there that it is most closely knit and intimate. The Second Vatican Council says: “Really partaking of the body of the Lord in the breaking of the Eucharistic bread, we are taken up into communion with Him and with one another”, referring to the well-known text of Saint Paul: “Because the bread is one, we though many, are one body, all of us who partake of the one bread.”4

  Perhaps this makes it a little easier to understand the Catholic Church’s reservations regarding intercommunion. Does it make sense to receive the Eucharist in the Catholic Church, by which we enter into communion with this Church in the most radical way possible, and at the same time “protest” against her by rejecting her authority and failing to obey her shepherds? Before the Eucharist, which is the most intimate fellowship of all, no half-hearted position is acceptable.

  In the Unity of the Holy Spirit

  Despite the fact that the Eucharist is the sacrament of unity and fellowship, it is still, above all, the Holy Spirit who makes the Church one. He transforms bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. Without him there is no Eucharist. It is also the Holy Spirit who draws people to the Eucharist and he who gives them the desire to be nourished by the Body and Blood of Christ.