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Illustration: Fresco at the baptismal font, at Žiča monastery, Serbia
Pope Francis’ Catechesis: The Spirit and the Bride. The Holy Spirit 9
Saint Peter’s Square – Wednesday, 16 October 2024
The Holy Spirit leads God’s people to Jesus our hope.
‘I believe in the Holy Spirit’.
The Holy Spirit in the faith of the Church
Reflection:
The Gospel according to John 14:15 – The Promise of the Holy Spirit Jesus told his disciples if you love me, you will keep my commandments.
And I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate to be with you forever.
This is the Spirit of Truth whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him because he dwells in you and is within you.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
With today’s catechesis we move from what has been revealed to us about the Holy Spirit in Holy Scripture to how He is present and at work in the life of the Church, in our Christian lives.
How is he present and at work in the life of the Church, in our Christian lives.
For the first three centuries, the Church did not feel the need to give an explicit formulation of its belief in the Holy Spirit.
For example, in the oldest creed of the Church, the so-called ‘Apostles’ Creed’, after proclaiming: “I believe in God the Father, creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, who was born, died, descended into hell, rose again and ascended into heaven”, it adds: “[I believe] in the Holy Spirit” and nothing more, without any specification.
But it was heresy that forced the Church to specify this faith.
When this process began – with St Athanasius in the fourth century – it was the Church’s experience of the sanctifying and divinising action of the Holy Spirit that led the Church to the certainty of the full divinity of the Holy Spirit.
This happened at the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 381, which defined the divinity of the Holy Spirit in the familiar words that we still repeat in the Creed today: ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit, who is Lord and gives life, and who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified, and has spoken through the prophets’.
To say that the Holy Spirit ‘is Lord’ is to say that He shares the ‘lordship’ of God, which belongs to the world of the Creator, not to the world of creatures.
The stronger statement is that He deserves the same glory and worship as the Father and the Son.
It is the argument of equal honor, dear to St Basil the Great, who was the main architect of this formula: the Holy Spirit is Lord, He is God.
The conciliar definition was not a point of arrival, but of departure.
And indeed, once the historical reasons that had prevented a more explicit affirmation of the divinity of the Holy Spirit had been overcome, it was quietly proclaimed in the worship and theology of the Church.
Already St Gregory Nazianzus, after the Council, will affirm without further hesitation:
‘Is the Holy Spirit then God? Most certainly! Is he consubstantial? Yes, if he is true God’ (Oratio 31, 5.10).
What does the article of faith that we proclaim every Sunday in the Mass, ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit,’ say to us, the believers of today?
In the past, it was mainly concerned with the statement that the Holy Spirit ‘proceeds from the Father’.
The Latin Church soon supplemented this statement by adding, in the Creed of the Mass, that the Holy Spirit ‘also proceeds from the Son’.
Since in Latin the expression ‘and from the Son’ is called ‘filioque’, this gave rise to the dispute known by this name, which has been the reason (or pretext) for so many disputes and divisions between the Church of the East and the Church of the West.
It is certainly not the place here to deal with this issue, which, moreover, in the climate of dialogue now established between the two Churches, has lost the bitterness of the past and today allows one to hope for full mutual acceptance, as one of the main ‘reconciled differences’. I like to say this: ‘reconciled differences’.
Among Christians there are many differences this one comes from this school, that one from another; this one is Protestant, that one… The important thing is that these differences are reconciled, in the love of walking together.
Having overcome this stumbling block, today we can emphasise the most important prerogative for us that is proclaimed in the article of the Creed, namely that the Holy Spirit is ‘life-giving’, that is, he gives life.
We ask ourselves: what life does the Holy Spirit give?
At the beginning, in creation, the Breath of God gave natural life to Adam; from a statue of mud, it makes him ‘a living being’ (cf. Gen 2:7).
Now, in the new creation, it is the Holy Spirit who gives believers new life, the life of Christ, supernatural life, as children of God.
Paul can exclaim:“The law of the Spirit that gives life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death” (Rom 8:2).
Where, in all this, is the great and comforting news for us?
It is that the life given to us by the Holy Spirit is eternal life!
Faith frees us from the horror of having to admit that everything ends here, that there is no redemption for the suffering and injustice that reign supreme on earth.
Another word of the Apostle assures us: ‘If the Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you’ (Rom 8:11).
The Spirit dwells in us, is within us.
Let us cultivate this faith also for those who, often through no fault of their own, are deprived of it and cannot make sense of life.
And let us not forget to thank the One who, through his death, obtained for us this priceless gift!
