Transcript

Following a Trinitarian structure, the Creed moves from the Father to the Son to the Holy Spirit, the Spiritus Sanctus, the Holy Breath.

The Spirit is not a what but a who, the same God of Israel we adore and glorify.

He is Zoopoieion, giver of life, who has spoken through the prophets.

From the very beginning of Jesus' earthly life, this life-giving power of the God of Israel filled Him with fire and wisdom, and this same Spirit Jesus now gives generously to His people.

Well, we've spoken of the Father and of the Son, so now it's time to speak of the Holy Spirit.

Here's the next article of the Creed: I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.

Who is this Pneumatagion?

That's the Greek name Pneuma, of course.

Think of pneumatic tire, maybe in English as the closest cousin.

Pneuma means air, wind, or breath, translated to Latin as Spiritus Sanctus—same idea, the Holy Breath.

Well, maybe a first clarification is that it's definitely a Someone, not a something.

The Creed speaks of the Lord, the giver of life, so we're talking about this divine person, the Holy Spirit.

The Creed gives that beautiful designation in the Greek, Zoopoieion.

It means the maker or the giver of life.

There's the Holy Spirit's great task and function in nature: He gives life.

You know, in the very first line of the Bible, you find a reference to the Holy Spirit.

We hear that the Ruach Yahweh in the Hebrew, the breath of God, hovers over the surface of the stormy waters, the Tohu Vabohu.

The sense there is like a mother bird hovering over her brood and urging them forward.

That's the sense of the Hebrew.

So from the beginning, the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, gives life, gives order in creation, and stirs things into deeper and deeper life.

Think now throughout the Old Testament of the role of the Ruach Yahweh.

One of my favorite references is when the prophet Samuel anoints young David, and it says the Ruach Yahweh, same thing, the Spirit of the Lord, rushed upon David.

And so the Spirit stirs up the kings and the prophets.

The word Ruach is used 378 separate times.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, the word Pneuma, which is really translated into Greek, is used 385 times in the New Testament, and they retain that Old Testament sense of life-giving, what stirs up energy and creativity.

But now, in the New Testament, the Ruach Yahweh is concentrated upon Jesus.

Think of the fact that the Pneuma, the Spirit of the Lord, overshadows the Blessed Mother; that's how she conceives in her womb.

It's the Pneuma, it's the Ruach Yahweh that sends Jesus into the desert when the time comes for the temptation.

After the resurrection, Jesus breathes the Pneuma; He breathes the Spirit into His disciples.

He tells them at the Ascension, Wait here in Jerusalem until the day when the Pneuma, the Spirit, will come upon you.

He's anticipating there, of course, the great day of Pentecost when the Spirit, as He came rushing upon David, now comes rushing upon us, the apostles of Jesus, coming down as tongues of fire and now filling them up with enthusiasm.

That beautiful word, of course, just means God in us—enthusiasm to go forth and do the work of the Church.

I always think of the disciples on the day of Pentecost; they're like the dry bones in that image from the prophet Ezekiel.

When the Spirit is here directed toward those bones, they rise up and they're covered in flesh, and they go forth as a great army.

So here are the disciples, who, like dry bones, are lifeless, but now filled with the Pneuma, filled with the Spirit of the Lord, they go forth.

And then we see, don't we, in the Acts of the Apostles?

So Pentecost is the day when the Spirit comes upon them, but now in the Acts of the Apostles, we see what the Spirit accomplishes.

Read every page of the Acts of the Apostles, and you'll see it—all of their preaching, teaching, miracle working, healing, and missionary travel, their facing down persecution—all of it are the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

Remember, I talked about with the Ascension: Jesus doesn't go away; He goes to a higher point of vantage, seated at the right hand of the Father.

Don't literalize that, but it's an image for Jesus now directing the work of the Church.

How does He direct it?

By sending forth the Holy Spirit.

You know, an image I love from the Church Fathers: the Holy Spirit is like rainwater.

Think of the rainwater that comes down.

So it's one element, but yet it gives rise to this myriad of forms of life.

Think of every plant, every flower, every tree in all their variety.

Well, they all come forth from the one element.

And indeed, think of every animal roaming on the face of the earth; they all depend upon water for the life that's in them.

So it goes in the order of the Spirit: from the one Spirit come all these different forms of life, and you see it now in the life of the Church.

One of the really great texts to illustrate this is 1 Corinthians, chapter 12. Paul is talking about the Church and the way the Holy Spirit, the Ruach Yahweh, the Pneuma Hagion, breathes life into the Church.

Now there are a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit.

So there's that idea: the one rainwater giving rise to all this variety.

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

Very important point, isn't it?

We're never given gifts of the Holy Spirit for our own edification; we're given gifts of the Spirit that we might build up the Church.

They're given for the common good.

Well, what do they look like?

To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom; to another, the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another, faith by the same Spirit; to another, gifts of healing by the same Spirit; to another, the working of miracles; to another, prophecy; to another, discernment of spirits; to another, various kinds of tongues; to another, the interpretation of tongues.

What's Paul talking about?

The vibrancy of life within the early Christian community—all these manifestations of the Holy Spirit.

Are they still around?

You bet!

You bet!

You know, teaching and prophecy and so on—of course!

I mean, I would hope right now what we're doing, teaching about the Creed, is coming, please God, from the Holy Spirit.

Whenever the Church teaches, preaches, and shares the Word, that's from the Spirit.

How about more spectacular gifts like the speaking in tongues?

A reality then and now?

Yeah, not everywhere, not commonly, but I think it does occur in the life of the Church sometimes, equipping people for mission.

There are many stories about that—people going forth on mission to a distant land, and somehow, through the power of the Holy Spirit, they're able to speak in the language necessary.

Other times, speaking in tongues is more like speaking in this language of heaven that’s beyond our normal speech.

Interpretation of tongues—sometimes people speak and they don't even know what they're saying, but someone else in the community is able to interpret it.

Did that exist in Paul's time?

Clearly!

Still today?

Yeah!

Sometimes gifts of healing—what are ordinary gifts of healing?

Every time we anoint someone, we do the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick.

That involves healing at all kinds of levels, spiritual as well as physical.

Are there some people who are given this extraordinary gift of healing?

Well, I've met a few in my life.

Again, it's not a common gift, not given to everybody, but there are some who have this very distinctive manifestation of the Spirit.

In fact, look in the history of the Church: when it moves into a new area, when there's missionary work, very often that work is accompanied by these miraculous things.

From mirari in Latin, to be amazed at, right?

It just means things that are really attention-getting.

Well, and I think understandably, when the Church is moving into a new area, it wants to get the attention of people.

So the miraculous, healing, and so on takes place.

You know, Paul talks here about words of knowledge, and that can mean maybe I'm given an intuition that's for your benefit.

I'm given a word of knowledge about you, and I share that.

You know, in my own experience, I think I've gotten in touch with this.

What I mean is sometimes you just receive this conviction, this deep intuition to do something or to say something.

Maybe it's an article to write, maybe it's a sermon to give, maybe it's something that needs to be said.

I know the difference between just discerning it through ordinary deliberation and somehow being seized by the Holy Spirit.

And so this giver of life, now recognized as the Spirit of Jesus, continues to give life in the Church.

Okay, but you know what's really important?

I think everybody is to read chapter 13 right after we attend to chapter 12. So chapter 12 speaks of all these various gifts.

Oh, you know, one more I should not forget this: there are the more spectacular ones like speaking in tongues, healing, and words of knowledge.

But Paul talks too about, here it says in this translation, forms of assistance and forms of leadership.

Well, some translations render that simply as administration.

Not spectacular, but people who administer in the life of the Church.

I remember when I was rector of the seminary, and I had not done a lot of administrative work in my priesthood.

Most of it had been teaching, preaching, and writing.

Suddenly, I was called upon to be an administrator, worried about money, personnel, and fixing roofs and that sort of thing.

I remember distinctly the day when, having spent the whole day in this sort of practical administration, I walked back to my room, though filled with a sense of the Spirit, knowing that the decisions I had made that day, please God, were helpful to the place.

I really did feel kind of lifted up by the Holy Spirit, and I recognized, yeah, even lowly administration can be one of the signs of the life-giving power of the Spirit.

Okay, that's all 1 Corinthians 12, but now look at 13. And if you've ever been to a Catholic wedding, trust me, you've heard this reading.

But I think it's very important now to see what Paul is doing.

Here's how chapter 13 begins: If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have faith enough to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.

What's he saying here?

Yes, all these things are manifestations of the Spirit—tongues, knowledge, prophecy, healing, and all that good stuff.

But what must undergird all of it?

What is, in fact, the soul and essence of all of it?

It is love.

Don't sentimentalize it.

Again, to love—agape is the word Paul used here.

To love is to will the good of the other.

Now there's the essence of the Holy Spirit.

That's what gives life; that's the Ruach Yahweh, that's the Pneuma Hagion, that's the Holy Breath.

Ultimately, it's love—the love that God is.

And it manifests itself in all these different ways through these various gifts.

But see, that means if I've got all those gifts but have not love, they don't mean anything.

They've turned into something else; they're no longer the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

They can be some form of selfish manipulation.

Now, no, no, the essence of it is love.

Bishop, we've heard a lot about the Trinity.

How is the Trinity active in the life of the Church today?

In every possible way!

I mean, look, whenever I do this, I'm invoking the Trinity, right?

The Father sent the Son to the limits of God-forsakenness to gather me and all of us into the Holy Spirit.

So every prayer that Christians make is made in the name of the Trinity.

Whenever we pray through Jesus Christ to the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, we're invoking the Trinity.

And it's that whole idea of drawing us into the divine life.

God, as it were, opens up His heart—Father, Son, and Spirit—and invites us in.

So in every prayer, in every sacrament, in every liturgy, the Trinity is involved.

Here's the other thing to say: there's an idea in Latin, circumincessio.

It means sitting in a circle.

It means the Trinitarian persons always operate together because they share the same Godhead.

We say the same substance.

So you can't talk about, Oh, the Father is on His own doing something, and the Son's over there.

Whenever the Son acts, the Father and Spirit are involved.

Whenever the Spirit's operative, the Father and Son are sending Him, right?

So the Trinitarian persons always sit together.

When I spoke in those very first lectures about God's creation, well, it's the whole Trinity who creates.

We have that wonderful song from long ago, Veni Creator Spiritus, right?

Come, Creator Spirit!

So the Spirit creates along with the Father and the Son.

The Father, Son, and Spirit are all Actus Purus.

The Father, Son, and Spirit together are all the force that sustains the whole cosmos.

So the Trinity is present now, right now, in this moment.

But more specifically, I think it's in salvation.

When we say the Father sent the Son to gather us into the Spirit, that's the Trinity at work.

Bishop, we hear about how Moses performed mighty deeds, and Isaiah had insight and foreknowledge of the divine plan.

Peter healed, Paul preached—all of this and more through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Are such miracles operative in the Church today?

Yeah, sure!

Call it in the more ordinary sense of preaching and teaching and reaching out in love and ministry, and all that is under the aegis of the Holy Spirit, for sure.

But I think you're driving at the more extraordinary manifestations of the Spirit.

So we talked about speaking in tongues, healing, and gifts of prophecy, and so on.

Yeah, all that's alive in the Church now.

Universally?

No. In fact, the miraculous—from mirari, to wonder at, amazing—well, if it happened all the time, it wouldn't be amazing, right?

So what makes them amazing is that they're rare, but they're certainly real.

In the course of my priesthood, I've known some people I think who have the gift of healing, for sure, who have the gift of channeling the Holy Spirit in this very profound way.

So sure, they're operative now.

Why does God give these gifts to some?

I don't know; that's up to God.

But up and down the centuries, He seems to distribute the gifts of the Holy Spirit—some more ordinary, others extraordinary—always for His purposes, always for the purpose of love.

But yeah, they're operative in the Church, and if you open your eyes, you'll start seeing them.

And now that provides everybody a really good segue into the next article of the Creed.

So we hear of the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.

Then we hear this: who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified.

Okay, go back with me now to that image, that analogy that St. Augustine proposed.

Remember?

That we're made in the image and likeness of God, but that's not our physical being because God isn't physical.

So Augustine says, Look at the soul.

That's the image and likeness of God.

Remember, he said man's mind or spirit has this capacity to form an image of itself—Notitio sui, he called it self-knowledge.

But then man's Notitio sui, the Father and the Son, look at each other because each is utterly perfect; each is a complete sharer in the divine nature.

And as they look at each other, Fulton Sheen put it this way: they sigh their love for each other.

Remember, to love is to will the good of the other—not in this case the absent good which I'm seeking, but the good that I possess, that I'm savoring.

The Father, from all eternity, looks at the Son; the Son, from all eternity, looks back at the Father.

And the two of them together sigh forth the Spiritus Sanctus.

They sigh forth the breath, which is the love that they share.

Now remember, I said to will the good of the other means with no self-interest.

I mean, maybe the highest saints in this life are able to achieve that pure level of love.

But see, within the divine life, within the life of the Trinity, the Father can't benefit from the Son; the Son can't benefit from the Father.

They're God.

Therefore, the love that they share is the purest possible love.

That's the Holy Spirit.

That's the Holy Spirit—the love between the Father and the Son.

You know what's wonderful here, everybody?

When you look now at the Gospels, we're given this privileged access to the inner life of God because we hear the Son speaking of and to the Father.

You know, in the heart, especially of John's Gospel, when the Son and the Father are in a kind of dialogue, that means we're listening in the Spirit.

Because whenever the Father and Son are connected—which they always are—they're connected by the power of the love that they share.

Jesus gives us, as it were, access to this eternal conversation between the Father and the Son, which is the Holy Spirit.

Now I've been speaking about Father, Son, and Spirit, and look what I'm doing—just perforce, because it's a metaphor we have to reach for.

Like, there's a thing over here, and a thing over there, and then a thing kind of in the middle.

Well, that's not what these Trinitarian realities are.

They're not three separate things, like here I am, there's the podium, and there's the camera.

These three separate things—that's not right.

What are they?

They're called, in the great tradition, persons.

Personae—that word is interesting.

Personare in Latin means to sound through, right?

Sonare is to sound, and then per is through.

So the persona was a mask that an actor would wear in the ancient world.

They'd hold it up; it had a kind of primitive microphone, you might say, and you'd speak through it—personare.

So the mask of the actor becomes a metaphor.

Here we speak of the person of the Father, the person of the Son, the person of the Holy Spirit.

But we don't mean one, two, three, like three things or three persons in the ordinary sense.

St. Augustine was asked, How come we call them persons?

His answer: So we have something to say when people ask us what they are.

See, what he's saying is don't be misled by the word into thinking they're three separate things.

Or I love this from St. Anselm in the Middle Ages: What are these three things, Father, Son, and Spirit?

Well, first of all, they're not things.

He said, I know what they are—they're nec quid.

Necio quid is Latin for I don't know what.

So he's gesturing to the fact that these realities we're calling Father, Son, and Spirit—mens notitia sui, amor sui, right?

Mind, self-knowledge, self-love—are not things in the ordinary sense.

Okay, so what are they?

Well, Thomas Aquinas, a little bit after St. Anselm, engages in a kind of metaphysical poetry.

He calls them subsistent relations.

That's very interesting, and here's why I say it's metaphysical poetry: because it's kind of a contradiction.

What he's saying there, in terms of classical philosophy, is that a substance, in classical philosophy, is subsistent.

That means it exists kind of in and through itself.

So here I am; I'm a substance.

That podium is a substance.

They have subsistence, and I can say, Well, there's a relation between us here.

So I'm standing behind the podium, or the camera is in front of the podium.

There are subsistent things, and then they have relationships.

The one thing a relationship is not, in classical philosophy, is subsistent.

Does that make sense?

It depends upon subsistent things.

But Aquinas says, Well, in the case of the Trinitarian persons, these are subsistent relations.

Who's the Father?

The Father is a relationship to the Son.

Who's the Son?

The Son is a relationship to the Father.

Who's the Spirit?

The Spirit is the relationship between the Father and the Son.

And they subsist from all eternity.

From this point of call it luminous darkness, we can make a few more clarifications.

The great tradition talks about four imminent relations within the Trinity.

That's what they mean.

We have active generation—that's the act by which the Father generates the Son from all eternity, before all eternity.

The Father speaks the Son.

Then there's passive generation—that's the Son receiving the Father.

The back and forth between Father and Son: active and passive generation.

Then the Father and the Son together actively spirate the Spirit.

Spirare just means to breathe.

So together, the Father and Son breathe forth the Spirit.

That's called active spiration.

And then the Spirit, receiving the breath of the Father and Son, that's called passive spiration.

Now, I know we're nerding out a little bit with this terminology, but what I love here is it's naming a dynamic that obtains at the most fundamental level of reality: the Creator God, three persons with these four imminent relations, with a kind of breathing in and breathing out relationship.

Relationship is not something secondary or derivative, but rather, relationship belongs to the very deepest structure of being.

Does this give everybody a clue as to why Jesus speaks of love—yes, even love of our enemies—as the most important ethical stance?

It's not just ethics; it's metaphysics.

It's getting us in touch with the very deepest level of reality.

That's what we're talking about when we talk about these relations within the Trinity.

Bishop, one of the neuralgic issues that besets the relationship of the Church in the West versus the Church in the East is the famous Filioque controversy.

What is this all about?

Yeah, it's kind of complicated.

There's a long history.

Filioque in Latin means and from the Son.

So we say in the Creed that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Son.

Well, in the original Nicene Creed, it doesn't say Filioque.

It doesn't say from the Father and from the Son.

It says proceeds from the Father.

So that phrase was not originally in the Nicene Creed but was added in the West, first at the Council of Toledo.

It was actually Charlemagne who made it very standard in the West, and then it became part of our tradition.

We say the Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Son.

Now, what worries some is that it can make the Spirit seem subordinate to the Father and Son.

If the Father and the Son together spirate or give rise to the Spirit, it can make the Spirit seem subordinate to the Father and the Son.

The other problem is it seems to compromise the primacy of the Father.

So if it's from the Father and the Son, it sounds like the Father's primacy within the Trinity is compromised.

Now, St. Thomas Aquinas in the West said no, because look, whatever the Son has, he has from the Father.

So we're not compromising the Father's primacy, nor are we subordinating the Spirit, because Father, Son, and Spirit all share the same nature.

So the West said no, those aren't serious problems.

And if you consult the Gospel of John, Jesus does seem to say, The Father and I will send the Spirit, or The Father will send the Spirit in my name.

Now you're probably picking up from this that this might be much ado about nothing, and actually, I agree with that.

I think there's very little to this controversy.

I kind of think what we mean by putting it in, they mean by taking it out.

I think if you look at the respective theologians, there really isn't a lot to this controversy.

I frankly wish we could drop it, and it would pave the way to a greater unity between East and West.

With that, I want to move to one of the most wonderful and mysterious sections in the New Testament.

It's toward the end of the Gospel of John, chapters 13 through 16, called the Farewell Discourse, culminating in what's called the High Priestly Discourse.

By far the longest speech of Jesus anywhere in the New Testament, we hear Jesus speaking of the Father and of the Spirit.

So it's such a privileged moment—the Son speaking of the other two persons of the Trinity.

We're in a very, very high place now, and I want to draw your attention to this.

Jesus says to His apostles, And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you forever.

Now there's one of the great names of the Holy Spirit.

The Greek term is Parakletos, so we say Paraclete.

Kalein means to call.

The Parakletos was someone that you called to your side, like a lawyer or an advisor during a trial.

Come on, help me here!

The Parakletos would stand and would speak on your behalf or help you speak—that's the idea.

So, I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Parakletos to be with you forever.

Now, what does He do?

Listen now: But the Advocate, the Parakletos, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you.

The Parakletos, sent by the Father and the Son, is linked to the Son.

He's the Spirit of the Son, and He will tell you everything you need to know about the Son, reminding you of all that the Son has said that perhaps you've forgotten.

Go further: When the Spirit of truth comes, the Parakletos, He will guide you into all truth.

Think of the apostles now.

This is the night of the Last Supper.

We're at the very beginning of the Church.

This is the seed of the Church—these 12 apostles of Jesus.

There they are in intimate union with Jesus Himself.

However, do they at that moment have the entirety of truth?

Well, no.

I mean, if you had asked one of those apostles that night about the four imminent relations of the Trinity, trust me, they couldn't have told you.

What's the role of the Parakletos whom Jesus will send to them?

He'll send it into the Church to guide them forever, guiding them into all truth.

The Spirit is the power now which presides over the Church's exploration of the fullness of truth.

It's beautiful: here at the very dawn of the Church, Jesus promises the Spirit who will guide the Church forever.

Throughout its long life—it's been 2000 years as I speak these words—how much longer?

I don't know when the Lord will come back, but we have the guarantee of the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit.

You know what comes to mind here is the great Protestant theologian Karl Barth, arguably the greatest Protestant thinker of the 20th century.

Karl Barth said this: from the very idea of revelation, we can come to understand the Trinity.

Now here's what he meant by revelation: we mean that God has spoken, right?

God has spoken to His people.

Well, if God has spoken, there must be a speaker.

We call Him the Father.

If God has spoken, there must be a word that He's spoken.

We call that the Son.

And if God has spoken, and it's really God who's spoken—not just some human philosopher—then there must be an interpreter of the Word.

There must be an equally divine person who interprets the Word that the Father has spoken.

That interpreter is the Holy Spirit.

Well, see, he's coming right out of this idea of the Parakletos who will lead you into all truth.

Go back now a few decades before Karl Barth to the greatest Catholic theologian of the 19th century, the now newly canonized Saint John Henry Newman.

Newman reflected quite a bit on the Holy Spirit, especially in terms of what he called the development of doctrine.

Newman had this keen idea that yes, the truth spoken by the Father to the Son is delivered to the Church, but it's not delivered in the manner of a football—this sort of self-contained thing that is then just simply passed on from generation to generation.

Rather, Newman says, the truth unfolds.

Think of it like a river that begins at a very small source and then unfolds across space and time, becoming greater and greater as other tributaries contribute to it, etc. Or he said it's like a tree that grows from a very small seed, but then over time it develops and spreads out through space and becomes this great mighty tree.

So it goes, he said, in the life of the mind.

So an idea is planted—let's say the idea of the Incarnation.

Yeah, that's present for sure in the New Testament.

That God has become one of us.

Paul says God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.

There's a seminal source of the idea of the Incarnation.

But then, across space and across time, as that idea is ruminated upon and reflected upon, all its different aspects are entertained.

And then that idea is tossed to someone else who does the same thing—thinks it through and asks questions about it—and then throws it back to the original interlocutor.

And then the two of them throw it to another group who do the same thing.

And then, across time, that idea is tossed on and on, and the same process happens.

It's like Newman said, taking a diamond and tossing it up into the sky, and it catches the light in different ways, so different aspects of it emerge.

Ideas exist, Newman said, not on the page but in the play of lively minds.

Well, so it goes, doesn't it?

Up and down the centuries, doctrine develops.

Now, moreover, because it develops, it's always in danger of corruption.

There could be a weird errant idea we entertained—one earlier, right?

The idea of Arius, his erroneous idea about the Incarnation.

Okay, that can happen.

So what's needed?

What's needed is the Parakletos whom Jesus promised to His Church, who will stand by your side, speak for you, advocate for you, and guide you into all truth.

How is the Parakletos operating?

Well, in and through this long, complicated process of the development of doctrine, as the Church moves ever deeper into the truth, further discriminating between a legitimate development and a corruption.

Now let me make this very specific in a Catholic sense: is there a privileged agent of this process?

So the Holy Spirit is the first cause, but is there a privileged agent?

Yeah, we would say the bishops, as formal teachers of the Church under the headship of the Pope, the successor of the Prince of the Apostles.

The Holy Spirit, we say, the Parakletos, operating through these great ecclesial agencies, guides the Church into all truth.

There's a speaker, the Father; there's a spoken word, the Son; and then there's this great interpreter of the Word, the Holy Spirit, who, through the agencies of the Church—through its bishops and the popes—guides the process of the development of doctrine.

I think that's a really interesting way to apply what's stated here in the High Priestly Discourse.

Bishop, can you say a little bit more about what the word person means in reference to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

In a way, I can't, because if you start saying a lot about it, you're going to be misleading.

See, in classical philosophy, a person is an instance of a rational nature.

That's abstract talk.

But what I mean is, take a nature like humanity.

Now that's a rational nature.

Human beings have mind and will, so an instance of that nature would be a person.

You're a person, I'm a person, he's a person—we're all instances, particular examples of a rational nature, right?

That's why I'm a person, but the tree is not a person; that's an instance of an irrational nature.

Okay, well, that's not what we're talking about at all in the Trinity.

Not as though there's some kind of nature of God which now has three instantiations of it—there's this person, that person, and that person.

So we don't mean that, and that's why the word itself is very misleading.

Which is why, as I point out, I think in the talk, when Augustine was asked, Well, why do you call them persons?

He said, So I got something to say when they asked me what they are.

Because call them what?

Essences or things?

Those don't work either.

In some ways, it's the least objectionable word to use because you don't want to give the impression you're dealing with three separate beings.

That's not what the Trinity is.

So I guess, in a way, I'm going to resist your question because if I try to be more precise, I'm going to lead you down the wrong road.

Call them necio quids, as Anselm did—I don't know what they are.

Call them, as Thomas did, subsistent relations, which is also kind of like, I don't know, what does that mean?

It's like saying a spiritual body.

But all the theologians are gesturing toward the fact that we don't really know what we're talking about when we name these utterly unique modalities of being.

So to press it: the Trinity doesn't have different personalities and attitudes.

No, I wouldn't say that, as though the Father is kind of grumpy and the Son's in a good mood.

No, because they all share the one divine nature.

The one divinity is shared by all three.

So, as I said, the Father, Son, and Spirit are all simple.

The Father, Son, and Spirit are all Actus Purus.

The Father, Son, and Spirit are all the creator of the world, right?

So no, they're not three separate personalities; they're subsistent relations within the unity of the divine essence.

Just one more clarification I want to make, and I'll bring this talk to a close.

The last bit of this article about the Spirit says, He has spoken through the prophets.

He has spoken through the prophets—prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Zechariah.

Yeah, sure, of course, through those Old Testament prophets, the Spirit, the Ruach Yahweh, came upon them, and they spoke from the standpoint of God.

Mind you, we're not talking in the Bible about philosophers.

You can tell the difference in a second between the way Isaiah or Jeremiah speaks and the way Plato or Aristotle speaks.

Plato and Aristotle—brilliant men, of course—but they're formulating arguments based on their own observations and intuitions.

They make arguments and they come to conclusions.

Beautiful!

It's called philosophy.

But you never get that impression, do you, when you're reading the prophets of the Old Testament?

As though they're sharing their own reflections with you, as though they're offering their own arguments?

No, no!

The word of the Lord came to me.

The Lord chose me, and then, Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, says the Lord.

Thus saith the Lord.

That's how a prophet speaks.

In other words, he's not coming up out of his own experience, out of his own reflection.

He's not offering you philosophy.

He's someone rather who feels the feelings of God, who thinks the thoughts of God, who sees the world from the standpoint of God.

I always like this from Yves Congar, the great 20th-century Catholic philosopher.

He said, The prophet is someone who speaks God's judgment on things.

Now, it doesn't mean simply that he's condemning things.

To speak God's judgment means he sees the world and speaks about it from the standpoint of God.

Gosh, think of all the voices you hear in the public space—from politicians, business leaders, and the formers of culture, etc. Yeah, they're seeing the world from a particular vantage point.

And you can recognize, though, when someone is speaking as a prophet.

They're speaking about the same world, but not from the standpoint of power, politics, or cultural formation.

They're speaking about the world from the standpoint of God.

That means they've been seized by the Holy Spirit.

He spoke through Ezekiel and Isaiah and Jeremiah.

He continues to speak in great prophetic figures in the life of the Church today.

I'll end with this: there's an interesting tension, and it's kind of built into the life of the Church, between what I call prophecy and institution.

So a prophet speaks, and it's recognized as the truth of God.

Then, often on the basis of that prophetic witness, an institutional structure emerges.

This is true in Old Testament times and certainly true in the age of the Church.

Out of the prophecy, for example, of Paul come the churches and their original structures.

Institutions, though, tend to get a little too staid, maybe a little too ossified.

They don't respond to what's the needful thing, and so new prophets emerge—people that are seized by the Holy Spirit.

They sense something and they challenge perhaps the institution.

Okay, it might take some time, but then that prophetic word, if it's a true one, eventually becomes absorbed into the life of the Church and part of its institutional structure.

We shouldn't be shocked by this or chagrined by it; it's just natural in the life of the Church—the play of institution and prophecy.

I'll give you an example: the Church Fathers loved this.

So on Easter Sunday morning, when Peter and John get the word of the resurrection, they didn't know what to make of it, and they begin running to the tomb.

But John's younger, so he runs faster and gets there first.

But then he waits.

He waits for Peter to catch up.

Then Peter comes, and he's the one who verifies the resurrection.

The Church Fathers saw that as a beautiful symbol of the play between prophecy and institution.

John, the mystic, the prophet, sprinted ahead.

He got it; he intuited it; he got there first.

But then he had the good grace to wait, and it's Peter who moved more slowly—that's the way institutions tend to go.

But it was Peter who ratified the truth of the resurrection and who becomes, by the way, its great spokesperson.

So it goes in the life of the Church: both prophecy and institution, both under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Parakletos, whose task is to guide us into all truth.

Bishop, in the Church we talk about being filled with the Holy Spirit, right?

And when you get confirmed, the Holy Spirit comes down upon you in a very special way.

But we don't always feel filled with the Holy Spirit in our daily lives.

Why is that the case?

Yeah, well, I would distinguish between the feeling and the fact.

To be filled with the Holy Spirit fundamentally means to be filled with love.

That's what the Holy Spirit is—the love between the Father and the Son, the love that God is.

So to have the Holy Spirit in you means you're a person who wills the good of the other.

That's the importance of Paul saying, Look, I've got faith to move mountains, but have not love, I'm nothing.

I speak in the tongues of angels, but have not love, I'm a clanging gong.

So fundamentally, it always means I have love in my heart; that's why I'm filled with the Holy Spirit.

Now, that could be accompanied by a lot of positive feelings, and a lot of the saints talk about when they're entering into their relationship with God, they are filled with kind of the thrill of it, and they're optimistic and upbeat.

But then a lot of the saints witness to the fact that at a certain point, God seems to take that away—not the love, that's the essence of it—but the feeling that accompanies it.

I'll give you a really good example: Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who begins her great devotion to the poor having heard the voice of Jesus.

She says literally having heard it, and she says, Yes, I'll serve the poorest of the poor.

Now talk about someone whose heart was filled with love!

But she lost the feeling part of it very early on, and what she felt was the absence of God.

What she felt was often desolation in her emotional life.

But all her life long, she had the love of God like crazy—that's the Holy Spirit.

Why does God allow us sometimes to feel the uplift of it, and other times takes it away?

Well, one answer that someone like John of the Cross, the great mystical master, gives is that God wants us to fall in love with Him, not with the good feelings associated with Him.

So if you say, Hey, I love going to church, and I love doing religious things because it really makes me feel good, well, that's great, and that might be the way God is drawing you into His life.

But at a certain point, He might remove that from you because you're not meant to fall in love with the feeling; you're meant to fall in love with Him.