What Religious Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in
Education?
Toppling
Dominos
Anti-Christians
don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's
Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic
Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of
Secularism
"Don't Impose Your
Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death
Warrant?
Court Ordered
Slow Motion Torture-Death Sentence
Men in Black
A Lot of Hot Air
The Culture War
Battles
"Stay with us, Lord"
Secular-to-English Dictionary
Moral Guidance for
Catholics in this Election
Christians
Losing America
Stem Cell Wars
Catholic
Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay
Marriage
Whose Side are You
on?
Vouchers Revisited
Real and Fake
Cloning Bans
Broken Compasses
No Room in the Inn
Killing Fields
Revisited
Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
The Battle for the Court
Victimless Crimes
More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion
Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way,
Baby
The Incarnational
Approach
The Many Meanings of ACLU
Things Your Media Never Told
You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them. How Else
Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be
Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of
Nullity?
Dutch Treats
Ecumenism
Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or
Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But
One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the
Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with
homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality,
and Common Sense
What Exactly is an Indulgence?
Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of
Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
Why are there so many bodies?
Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
Meditation
"You Taught me well,
Mommie dearest"
Moral Fallout
Neutral on the Wrong
Side
"These are the
Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few
are Married
"...Prepare him for
additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a
Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in
the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a
Person?
The Point of a Point of
View
Politically Correct,
Morally Depraved
Population
Controllers out of Control
Practical Dreamers
Social Progress
through Immorality
Shall we Do Evil for
Goodness Sake?
Reason and Faith
Resurrection Glory
Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be
schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality
Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass
Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull
the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to
Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal
if...
Get Rid of that Worthless
Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues
Prior to Voting
|
|
 by Monsignor James C. Brunner |
Faith Points |
The Unknown God
St. Paul once referred to an "unknown god" worshipped by the Greeks. (Acts 17:23) It is not too much an exaggeration to say that the third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is an "unknown God." It is fairly easy for us to visualize the Father and the Son because this is a basic relationship in our experience. The Spirit is not as readily grasped by our imagination. An aid to help us comprehend the Spirit is the concept of love. We have some difficulty in expressing love but we are familiar with love that finds expression in romantic songs, patriotic hymns and marches, poetry, and stirrings in the heart. The reason that love is an appropriate aid in our understanding of the Holy Spirit is that he is, so to speak, made of love.
The first Person of the Blessed Trinity is called Father because he is the source of all things and he generates a Son. He brings forth his Son by means of his thought. We think in mental words, many of them, because we need to chop up the little that we know into bits and pieces so that our small minds can deal with them. God expresses all he knows, which is everything that can be known in a single Word. Of this Word John wrote, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God." (Jn. 1:1) John tells us that a Person called "Word" was coeternal with God and distinct from him although equal to him. Our thoughts are reflections of our personality. God’s single thought is a Person who is called the Son because he is generated by the thought of the Father. Since he is the thought of God he is also the Truth.
We not only have minds that know truth but wills that love goodness. The same is true of God. Our wills love perfection. Everything loves whatever is its perfection. Birds love food, the eye loves color, and the mind loves truth. In God, the Father has a thought who is the Word or the Son, a perfect image of himself. Both Father and Son are all-perfect. The Father loves the perfection of the Son and the Son the perfection of the Father. They give themselves to one another in a love that is so complete and intense that from their common love there issues a third Person in the Trinity, a Person who is called the Holy Spirit, Love, or Gift. I said earlier that the Holy Spirit was "made of love" because he is the love of Father and Son.
The Spirit’s works of love were evident in the Old Testament. There we find two lines of prophecy, one referring to the Messiah and the other to the Spirit. The prophetic texts that refer directly to the Spirit are accented with "love and fidelity." (Ezek. 11:19; 36:25; 37:1-14; Joel 3:1-2) In the New Testament with the precursor John the Baptizer, who "was filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb (Luke 1:15,41)," the Spirit reached the limits of the investigation of the prophets and the longing of angels (I Pet. 1:10-12). Mary, the Mother of God, was the Spirit’s masterpiece in preparing for the gift that would show that God loved the world enough to send his only Son (Jn. 3:16). The Spirit overshadowed Mary (Lk. 1:26-38) and Mary’s virginity became fruitful. Jesus spoke of the Spirit of the Lord being on him and anointing him for his work of salvation. (Lk. 4:18-19) After his resurrection Jesus gave the Spirit to the Apostles by breathing on them (Jn. 20:21). From that time the Spirit’s work of love became the work of the Church.
The Acts of the Apostles catalogs many interventions of the Spirit in the early Church. He descended on the disciples and prompted them to proclaim Christ (Acts 2). The Spirit filled Peter as he spoke to the Sanhedrin after curing a cripple (Acts 4:8) and guided him to the house of Cornelius (Acts 11:12). Stephen was filled with the Holy Spirit as he was martyred (Acts 7:55). The "Spirit of the Lord" snatched Stephen away after he had baptized an Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:39). With the consolation of the Holy Spirit the infant Church grew in number (Acts 9:31). The Spirit sent forth Barnabas and Saul on their first missionary journey (Acts 13:4) and guided them on other journeys (Acts 16:6-7,9). Frequently persons who had received the Spirit at the hands of the Apostles spoke in tongues and uttered prophecies (Acts 10:44-46; 19:6). The Spirit guided the decision of the Apostles and presbyters at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15:28). The early Church was very conscious of the activity of the Holy Spirit in its midst.
The Spirit is no less active in his work of love in the Church today. The love of God "has been poured into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us" (Romans 5:5). The Spirit endows us with gifts (Isa. 11:2-3) and fruits (Gal. 5:22-23). The first effect of the gift of Love is remission of our sins (Jn. 20:23). He helps us to "work according to the Spirit" (Gal. 5:25). The Spirit of Truth remains in the Apostles through their successors and he teaches them everything, reminds them of everything that Jesus said (Jn. 14:26). He testifies to Christ (Jn. 15:26), convicts the world of sin (Jn. 16:8), declares the things to come, guides the Apostles to all truth, and glorifies Jesus (Jn. 16:13-14). Through the sacraments Christ communicates the Holy Spirit to the members of his Body, the Church. The Spirit as the source of all holiness endows the members of Christ’ Body with holiness. The Holy Spirit enables one to say that Jesus is Lord (I Cor. 12:3). The Spirit produces spiritual gifts of service for the Church as he wills (I Cor. 12:4-11). He assists our prayer life (Rom. 8: 26). Someone who is constantly active in our lives and close to us as our spirits are to us should not remain an "unknown God."
The Trinity gives us a glimmering of what we will have in heaven. The Father is the source of all life and in him we will have perfect life. The Son is the Truth and in him we will have perfect knowledge and complete truth. We long for love. Persons without love developed warped personalities or even do away with themselves because life without love is not worth living. Love on earth will always be imperfect. The songs of lovers’ quarrels and divorce courts are evidence of that. If we are ever to have perfect love we will find it only in the Holy Spirit who is made of love.
