By Scott Cairns
If, upon taking up this or any scripture,
or upon lifting your one good eye to inspect
the faintly green expanse of field already
putting forth its late winter gauze of grasses,
you come to suspect a hushed conversation
under way, you may also find sufficient grounds
to suspect that difficult disposition
we call the Ghost, river or thread drawn through us,
which, rippled as any taut rope might be, lifts
or drops us as if riding a wave, and which fends
off, for brief duration, our dense encumberment
—this flesh and its confusions—if not completely,
if only enough that the burdens be felt, just
shy of crushing us.
2. The Self-Effacing Spirit
While the Father and the Son are both very “public” persons of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is “self-effacing.” Whereas the Father and the Son call attention to themselves, so to speak, the Spirit calls our attention away from himself and toward the Son. Like John the Baptist, the Spirit points away from himself to the person of Jesus Christ. The Spirit does not speak about himself but about the Word made flesh. But the Spirit’s self-effacement is also the occasion for the Spirit’s ubiquity. The Spirit is ever-present as the one who directs us to Christ and, through Christ, to the Father. The Spirit is involved in every dimension and aspect of the gospel—from creation to Israel to the prophets to Christ to the Church to the new creation—and we see this ubiquity reflected in the Spirit’s presence throughout the Catechism. Like a stagehand who keeps a theater running, the Spirit is essential to the drama of salvation, though never as the main actor on the stage.
3. The Work of the Spirit
The Spirit’s work falls into the following broad categories:
(1) preparation,
(2) revelation,
(3) communication,
(4) participation,
(5) actualization, and
(6) consummation.
4. The Trinitarian Mission of God
St. Irenaeus writes: “For those who bear God’s Spirit are led to the Word, that is, to the Son, and the Son presents them to the Father, and the Father confers incorruptibility on them. And it is impossible to see God’s Son without the Spirit, and no one can approach the Father without the Son, for the knowledge of the Father is the Son, and the knowledge of God’s Son is obtained through the Holy Spirit.” (¶683)
