Holy Rosary Catholic Church

Dear Parishioners,

I ran across the following passage from the Office of Readings for Thursday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time written by St. Columban, Abbot (Instr. 1 de Fide, 3-5: Opera, Dublin, 1957, pp. 62-66). The passage is particularly fitting for Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity.

Who then is God? He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God. Do not look for any further answers concerning God. Those who want to understand the unfathomable depths of God must first consider the world of nature. Knowledge of the Trinity is rightly compared with the depth of the sea. Wisdom asks: Who will find out what is so very deep? As the depths of the sea are invisible to human sight, so the Godhead of the Trinity is found to be beyond the grasp of human understanding. If any one, I say, wants to know what he should believe he must not imagine that he understands better through speech than through belief; the knowledge of God that he seeks will be all the further off than it was before.

Seek then the highest wisdom, not by arguments in words but by the perfection of your life, not by speech but by the faith that comes from simplicity of heart, not from the learned speculations of the unrighteous. If you search by means of discussions for the God who cannot be defined in words, he will depart further from you than he was before. If you search for him by faith, wisdom will stand where wisdom lives, at the gates. Where wisdom is, wisdom will be seen, at least in part. But wisdom is also to some extent truly attained when the invisible God is the object of faith, in a way beyond our understanding, for we must believe in God, invisible as he is, though he is partially seen by a heart that is pure.

May God bless you.

Fr. Ian

Dear Parishioners,

The Holy Spirit is the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity. With the Father and the Son, he is adored and glorified. The word “Spirit” comes from “the Hebrew word ruah, which, in its primary sense, means breath, air, wind” (Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC] 691). While conversing with Nicodemus, Jesus likens the Holy Spirit to the wind (cf. Jn 3:8). To be sure, one can also attribute the terms “holy” and “spirit” to the Father and the Son, but by joining these words together, “Scripture, liturgy, and the theological language designate the inexpressible person of the Holy Spirit, without any possible equivocation with other uses of the terms ‘spirit’ and ‘holy’ ” (CCC 691).

Jesus also uses the term “Paraclete” for the Holy Spirit, which is a Greek word meaning “intercessor” or “comforter.” The Spirit is the one called to our side—to plead our cause for us. Therefore, he also is known as the Advocate. He is likewise called the Spirit of truth, the Spirit of the promise, the Spirit of adoption, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of Glory.

No one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God (cf. 1 Cor 2:11). It is the Spirit who reveals God to us, that is, his Christ, who is his Word, his living Utterance. The Spirit does not speak on his own, but only what he hears from the Christ. Such divine self-effacing on the part of the Spirit “explains why ‘the world cannot receive [him], because it neither sees him nor knows him,’ while those who believe in Christ know the Spirit because he dwells with them” (CCC 687). The Spirit is also known through Sacred Scripture, Tradition, the Magisterium, the Church’s liturgies, individual prayer, the charisms and ministries of the Church, the apostolic and missionary life of the Church, and the witness of the saints.

For further reading on the Holy Spirit, please read CCC 687-688, 691-693. May God bless you.

Fr. Ian