Who is the Spirit...?

“…the Spirit of truth…will guide you to all truth.” John 16

 

Who is this Holy Spirit? We here in the West have very vague notions of the Holy Spirit. For some of us the Spirit is an afterthought in the Trinity…a “trailer-child,” or the dove that hovers over Jesus. But we sell ourselves short. This third Something in the divine Mystery is the actual love-gift of God given to us. Just as the Father is the Singer, and the Word is the Song, so the Spirit is the Singing. They are distinct but cannot be separated. Remove one, and the whole relationship falls apart. And more, this relational wonder is going on within us.

 

The Church uses wild and wonderful images to try to express this in human terms. There are eight powerful biblical images that refer to the Holy Spirit. The images point to functions, the actual activity of the Spirit in our lives.

 

The most common is the dove. The image speaks of comfort and peace. Then there is fire, which cauterizes and consumes. The tongues indicate that this presence within us will erupt in speech about the wonders of God. Then there is water, which washes away and cleanses, in addition to making growth spring up everywhere. Oil softens and makes movement easy and smooth. It also allows wrestlers to slide out of the grasp of an opponent. Blood is our very life, and such is this Spirit the eternal life that has been won for us. Wine makes us drunk on God, intoxicated with love that spills out onto others. The wind-breath is both power and fragrance, like lilac in the springtime. Put these all together and we have just a glimpse of the Love-Gift of the Spirit who is our Advocate and Comforter when life weighs heavy on us, and we are submerged in darkness. Because this One is the Singing of the Singer’s Song, maybe we all can learn from this Gift to at least whistle in the dark.

 

 

 

 

Fire to burn away my resistance

Tongue to give me a voice

Water to wash away my arrogance

Oil to smooth my response

Dove to calm my fear in the dark

Blood to give me life

Wine to intoxicate my soul

Wind-breath to lift me up…

Brand me with the Truth that is my Jesus who has found a home in me.

 

The Spirit...

I will send you …the Spirit of Truth…John 15

As Dominicans, we are flexible indeed. We move like dancers taught by a founder who chose white for the color of the religious habit for his Order, symbol of grace, light, and the baptismal garment. Dominic is also the Doctor of Truth.

But what is truth? (We sound like Pilate!) First and most important, for the Dominican, Truth is a person, not a proposition. Truth is not a statement of belief about God, about Jesus. It is far more. We are referring to the One who is Truth itself, the fullness of Truth. Once we realize our Dominican life is all about a relationship with a person, then we can ask again, “Risen Lord, what are you the Truth about? Let’s take it step by step…

Truth is the real…as known by the mind. Now what is real is real, whether we know it or not. But when we do know it, it gets inside us. We are bonded with it. Our mind is bonded with it. When we come to know this One who is the fullness of Truth, then we are in him, and he is in us. So John is spot on in putting these words into the mouth of Jesus in his gospel.

There is nothing as real as this One who is Divine Love itself in our skin. There is nothing more concretely real than God, even if God is not material. We Dominicans have Truth as our motto: veritas! Wonder of wonders, we are talking about our relation with this Christ as the motto, the focus of our Dominican life. This is no airy-fairy head trip. This is no abstraction. We are referring to our ever-deepening relationship with the One who the realist of the real.

No wonder then, that Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as “the Spirit of Truth.” He’s talking about sending us the Spirit of his very self. The Risen One, who is the very Truth about himself and the   life he has restored to us, becomes the gate, the door, and the way in. Into what?  Into the very heart of God.

So is that what you are the Truth about, Jesus? You are my way, my truth, and my unending life? And you are giving me your own Spirit so I don’t ever forget it? Then I think I get it. You’re all I’ll ever really need.