Thomas Heath OP suggests that we try to recognise the Holy Spirit, who is gift itself, in the many gifts which we have received and which show themselves in our lives of seeking God.
Most of us go from day to day on a kind of natural spiritual strength. At least we feel that we do. We have very little experience of the special help of the Spirit, though we wouldn’t deny it if someone told us that the Spirit was there. It’s that we cannot verify such a presence or strength very clearly from our own experience. The purpose of this article is to awaken awareness of the presence of the Spirit within us, to sharpen our sensitivity to the Spirit’s action in our lives, and to bring us to a deeper appreciation of the excellent gift God has given us. At the end of the first long prayer in the fourth Eucharistic Prayer we read, ‘And that we might live no longer for ourselves but for him (Christ) he sent the Holy Spirit from you, Father, as his first gift to those who believe, to complete his work on earth and bring us the fullness of grace.’ What follows is a comment on these words.
Receiving the gift of the Spirit
The Scriptures are full of references to the Spirit. The Spirit sums up all the gifts given to us. Indeed, the Spirit is the first and best gift. In his first sermon, Peter tells the people to be baptised for the forgiveness of sins, ‘and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit’ (Acts 2:38). Luke reports the Lord as saying, ‘If you then, evil as you are, know how to give your children what is good, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him’ (Lk 11:13). The Spirit is the Paraclete, paracletos, which is variously translated as advocate, intercessor, counsellor, protector, support. The Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, helping us to accept and have some appreciation of the mystery of Christ and the meaning of his teaching.
In our search for holiness the Spirit is both mover and norm (Gal 6; I Thess 4:3-8). The Spirit gives freedom and liberation from all sorts of restrictions, especially sin (Eph 4:30). The Spirit gives ease, spaciousness and the eternal youthfulness of a new creation (II Cor P7; 5:17; I Cor 2:4). Docility to the Spirit determines the degree of Christian love we may achieve (I Cor 2:6-3:3).
Explosion of energy
In the Acts of the Apostles the Holy Spirit is reported mostly as an extraordinary phenomenon, an explosion of energy, as at Pentecost and the baptism of Cornelius but not as a moral force. Paul is the first to regard the Spirit as the driving force of the moral life (Rom 8:12; Gal 5:16). Paul saw the danger of some charismatic gifts being overvalued as well as the behaviour at divine worship being sometimes unrestrained, so he guided the faithful towards a higher and less dramatic way, the way of love (I Cor 13). He clearly regarded love as the first fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal 5:22). This list gives us a fairly good appreciation of the kind of spirit the Holy Spirit is: loving, peaceful, joyful, patient, kind, good, trusting, gentle and sell-disciplined. (Schnackenburg, The Moral Teaching of the New Testament, Part II, Ch.l, Section 18).
In his magisterial study on Cardinal Newman, Ian Kerr points up the discovery by the scholar in his Anglican days of the role of the Holy Spirit both in establishing the Christian life and in the daily demands of ordinary duties. The first role is regeneration brought about by the indwelling of the Spirit. ‘The indwelling of the Holy Spirit…was the most fundamental theological discovery that Newman made from his study of the scripture and the Fathers’ (John Henry Newman: A Biography, Oxford University Press paperback, 1990, p.91 cf note 134. See note p.154 where Newman discusses Luther, his teaching on faith versus good works. Newman thinks that prior to faith comes the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and from that comes both faith and ‘renewal’, i.e., good works). And in this second role of renewal, also called sanctification, Newman believed that ‘the Holy Spirit normally worked through ordinary human channels, such as conscience, reason and feelings’ (ibid, p.91). Real spirituality to Newman was characterised by its ‘utter unpretentiousness’ (P.93) and was marked by the spirit of self-denial which ‘is pleasing to Christ and consists in little things, in the continual practice of small duties which are distasteful to us’ (P.93).
There is nothing of the fireworks of a personal Pentecost in Newman’s life. The Spirit is certainly present, leading him to the truth – but slowly, step by painful step. ‘I do not ask to see the distant scene/One step enough for me.’
Amenable to promptings
The basic idea of Aquinas is that the gifts of the Holy Spirit make us more amenable to the interior promptings of the Spirit. It is not usually that the gifts give us some super strength to go beyond the virtues regarding the kind of things accomplished but rather in the manner of accomplishing them’ (Summa Theologiae, 1a11ae, q.68 art.2, ad I). The gifts give a more direct co-natural and intuitive manner of operation. For example, people can be brave in face of physical danger or in standing up for the truth of some moral principle, or the strength of their native courage but they have to think it over, ‘screw up’ their courage, as we say, and finally act.
The gift on the other hand, makes the act surprisingly easy, almost instinctive. We don’t need to reflect that we should do something; we just do it. And afterwards when people remark on our courage, we are astonished. I think it was Mario Andretti, the Formula One racing driver who when told that he was courageous said, ‘Courageous? I don’t know. We are so busy checking out the things we must do, we don’t have time to think much of the danger involved.’ Thomas More was able to joke just before his execution, and Saint Lawrence (if the legend is correct) was able to joke during his passion. They were under the influence of the gift of fortitude, making their deaths look easy to undergo. But, I suppose that sort of courage does go beyond ‘the kind of thing accomplished’ as well as the manner of accomplishing it.
This is true also of the gifts of wisdom and understanding, since they are based more on an interior experience of God than on philosophical or theological knowledge. The experience is based on love. God is bathed in love, our love, arising from our virtue of charity, and when that happens God takes on a profound attraction. Love works as the formal medium of the object; love becomes a condition of the object, and once the object is penetrated or bathed in love, the mind understands it in an intuitive rush not given to the more laborious workings of reason. ‘Taste and see that the Lord is good’ (Ps 34:7). ‘The Spirit reaches the depths of everything, even the depths of God’ (I Cor 2:10).
Gazing on loveliness of God
Wisdom’s primary work is contemplation, the appreciative gazing on the loveliness of God. The intellect is moved by the impulse of the Spirit, and of the love the Spirit brings, to penetrate the deep things of God. The one beholding God is then given a profound (but not necessarily a clear) grasp of God. The analogy is not rational or abstract knowledge, but rather the obscure process whereby a lover comes to know the beloved, or the poetic experience whereby a person is grasped strongly yet inarticulately by the beautiful.
A second function of wisdom is judgement and this applies both to the speculative and practical ordering of things. But in either case, the judgement is not made on the basis of logical deduction about the divine attributes but rather from an internal experience of divine things. In the case of the speculative judgement, the mind under the impulse of the Spirit judges, that is, sees and tastes how all God’s works are traceable to mercy; it tastes the difference between love and justice in God; it knows God’s goodness because it suffers that goodness; it is thoroughly convinced of God’s awesome power because it has been brushed by the power and sometimes almost crushed by that power; it understands God’s peace because it is immersed in that peace; and it make judgements about all of these qualities in God: how good is the goodness, how powerful the power, how wise the wisdom.
Filled with fullness of God
Paul surely was speaking out of his own gift, his participation in the suffering of the divine things, when he writes, ‘Out of his infinite glory may he give you the power through his Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, you will with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth, until knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge you are filled with the utter fullness of God’ (Eph p6-19).
In the practical ordering of things, wisdom judges both out of an experience of finality, that is, out of the ultimate and final goodness of God, and by consulting the divine law (by suffering it) for light on human activity. The gift, then, is an indispensable aid to deepen our resolve to avoid sin like the plague. We see, we taste the ultimate goodness, and no other goodness can taste that good, and all other goodness is judged in the light of that taste, and in so far as this or that goodness tends to obliterate the taste of the final goodness, we can judge the value of the reality before us.
Searching the depths of God
Again, the ambiguity of life calls frequently for extremely complex decisions. The gift of wisdom disposes us under the impulse of the Spirit to search the deep things of God for light. A rule, a commandment, a saying of Christ will strike like a lightning bolt and illumine the whole dark landscape and bring us certitude and peace. ‘My prayer is that your love for each other may increase more and more, and never stop improving your knowledge and deepening your perception so that you can always recognise what is best. This will help you to become pure and blameless, and prepare you for the Day of Christ, when you will reach the perfect goodness which Jesus Christ produces in us for the glory and praise of God’ (Phil I:9-II). We see in this saying as well as the one quoted above, the central place of love, both for God and for each other, in our appreciation of God’s mystery and in the perception of divine guidelines. ‘And then, planted in love and built on love… that your love.. .may increase more and more and never stop improving your knowledge.’
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful
and enkindle in them the fire of your love.
Mary, Seat of Wisdom, pray for us.
This article first appeared in Spirituality (July-August 1997), a publication of the Irish Dominicans.
