Understanding the Holy Spirit

but God is if soon sa God is the shear active to be itself therefore God is utterly perfect and personal in his reality now who's the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit is a person who shares in the one divine essence that one divine essence is the unconditioned reality I've just been talking about therefore of course the Holy Spirit is personal as the son is personal as the father is personal welcome back to the word on fire show I'm the host Brandon Vaught the content director at word on fire joining us from Santa Barbara is Bishop Robert Barron Bishop Baron good to see you hey Brandon good to see you as always hey one of the most exciting new books that we've released just came out a couple weeks ago and I know it's it's very special to you given your connection to the author you know is a book titled st. Catherine of Siena and it's by father Paul Marie talked a little bit about the new book and your relationship to father Paul yeah we've been friends for about 20 years now and father Paul teaches spirituality at the angelicum the great Dominican University in Rome and I think one of the really leading spiritual writers in the world today so we were delighted that he was some you know willing to contribute to this series of ours and it's a book on st. Catherine who was one of his great mentors and heroes and it's a really penetrating interesting study of st. Catherine of Siena from a spiritual theological standpoint Catherine of course as a Dominican was very indebted not so much in the high academic sense but she was indebted to abstain Thomas Aquinas and his vision of things of the God world relationship of sin and grace etc and that comes through and father Paul also links her to some other interesting figures in the history of thought so the book I think is is terrific so yeah I'm real pleased about that and this is the first book that we've published through the word on fire Institute which makes it doubly exciting it's kind of a more serious look at Katherine there's footnotes and endnotes but I don't think it's to scholarly that it would put off say the average lay reader so if you want to learn more about Kathy and I highly suggest checking it out you can find it at word on fire show.com slash katharine again the book is titled st. Catherine of Siena mystic a fire preacher of freedom it's by father Paul Marie a great Dominican and one of our fellows of the word on fire Institute so you could find it again at word on fire show.com slash Catherine well bishop some years back another book came out it was by an evangelist preacher named Francis Chan and it's old I don't know million copies a mega popular book and it had a very intriguing title and Alan I don't want to talk about the book I want to focus on the title and what it suggests it was called forgotten God reversing our tragic neglect of the Holy Spirit and that phrase has always stuck with me forgotten God that if we believe in one God in three persons we talk often about the Father we pray often to the son but in many circles the Holy Spirit sort of gets short shrift I mean do you find that the case in the Catholic Church today outside of maybe more of charismatic circles circles that invoke and pray often to the Holy Spirit that by and large the Holy Spirit seems to sort of be third on the totem pole when it comes to the Trinity yeah there's some truth to it I think maybe we in the West should take our lumps a little bit on this because Eastern Christianity for centuries now has been criticizing the West just for that a kind of neglect of the Holy Spirit it's probably fair to say that in the theology and spirituality of the Eastern Christian Church there's a greater stress on the spirit years ago a colleague of mine used the phrase I've always liked he said we are Christocentric and indeed that's one of our principles of the word on fire Institute where Christocentric but we shouldn't be crystal monist and what he meant was a sort of reduction of everything to the second person of the Trinity the Holy Spirit in a way it's funny Brandon because the Holy Spirit should be the most available if you want of a three persons because the Spirit is if you want the divine power bringing to bear the Sun upon us he's the one who interprets the word the one who applies to individual hearts the power of the cross and resurrection so in a way the spirit is the one that we're most directly in contact with you might say but I think in our theology in spirituality we've tended a bit to underplay the spirit now I know you've mentioned a few times that during this coronavirus pandemic one of the goods that's come out of it despite all the tragic suffering of course is that a lot of your events have been canceled a lot of your trips have been canceled so you've gotten to spend a lot more time at home and one of the things you've done is significant work on this new book you've been writing on the Creed and I know you just wrapped up the section on the Holy Spirit so I thought maybe even good time to ask you what are the basics that Catholics need to know about the Holy Spirit who is the Holy Spirit maybe the first thing you just implied it there in your question is who so we might have a tendency to say well what is the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is just some sort of impersonal energy or force the Holy Spirit is a who as a person here's the way to state it classically the Holy Spirit is the love shared by the father and the son so from all eternity the father you might say the father I always loved about German phrase the old coins he's the he's the fundamental source of the divine life the Father Knows himself in this great act of self-knowledge notícias soui san agustin called it's self-knowledge the Sun emerges if you want the Sun is begotten we say of the father so the son is the logos the word the interior word by which the Father Knows himself now since the father and son share everything except paternity and filiation those are unique to each one but they share the same divine essence that means that when the father looks at the son he sees utter perfection and when the son who's endowed with mine and will etc looks back at the father he sees utter perfection and so the two of them fall in love with each other I've always loved our friend Fulton Sheen's great line that they they sigh their love for each other and that sigh of course the spiritus Sanctus the the holy breath shared by the father and son is the Holy Spirit and now you see that the brilliance of st. Augustine's image that you see how this doesn't split God into three there aren't three gods or three things rather one God in these three subsistent relations of eternity filiation and we call it technically spy raishin which means mutual breathing forth the spirit is that third person of the Trinity the shared love a father and son I think for a lot of Catholics the Holy Spirit feels like an addendum to the father and the son and a lot of people wonder why is the Holy Spirit even necessary what does the Holy Spirit provide that say we don't get from the father or the son well maybe let's go back because I've been doing more hi Phil esophageal language let's go back to the scriptural source so we say that the father sent the son how far well into our humanity how far well into our death how far all the way to the limit of God forsaken us the father sends the son out why so is to embrace all the world that had run away from God right now in this great image the father and the son kind of stretched to the limit what is it that keeps them from snapping apart well it's the Holy Spirit because it's the love that connects them the love in which the son was sent the love by which the son accepted his mission now watch as the Sun returns to the father so we say Christ risen from the dead now returns the father was he bring with him in principle everyone that he's embraced therefore the whole world in principle has been included within the Holy Spirit within the love that connects the father and the son that's why hardly an addendum the Holy Spirit in a way is the whole operation think of this - Brandon whenever we do this little gesture right and we say in the name of the Father we begin with the unoriginal source of divinity and then of the son this is meant to imitate the downward trajectory of the Son of God the Son though he was in the form of God did not deem equality with God a thing to be grasped but rather emptied himself when all the way down and then the Holy Spirit is the gathering of the world into the love that connects the father in the son and that's why the Spirit hardly an addendum in some ways is is the whole story the point of the story that's why we have a spiritual life because we've been gathered into the love that connects the father and the son I've seen some people maybe ill-advisedly compare the holy spirit to say the force in Star Wars and then here you know we've been using analogies that aren't perfect but analogies nevertheless that compare the Holy Spirit to love or to the divine breath but for a lot of people I think all of these are sort of lifeless energy forms you know they're abstract things but we describe the Holy Spirit as a person what does it mean to say that the Holy Spirit is the love between the father and the son but that the Holy Spirit is a person what marks it as a person we got me a couple moves one is when we accept that God is the unconditioned source of existence itself that means that God is utterly fulfilled in his being there's no potentiality in God God is Octus purest as Thomas Aquinas said it means like pure actualization pure energy well that means that there can't be any lack in God the minute you say oh gods like the force in Star Wars you mean some kind of grand all-enveloping thing that doesn't really have mind will and personality well then you've said if so facto conditioned contingent reality that's not God Thomas would have called that by the way ends commune a like being in general but God is if soon si God as the sheer act of to be itself therefore God is utterly perfect and personal in his reality now who's the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit is a person who shares in the one divine essence that one divine essence is the unconditioned reality I've just been talking about therefore of course the Holy Spirit is personal as the son is personal as the father is personal so none of the three persons of the Trinity should be compared to like a Star Wars force they're all personal in that sense now maybe we'll get to this we also use person in a kind of derivative way too when talking about the personhood of the Holy Spirit but you're getting at this more fundamental sense that in the measure that all three person share the one divine essence they can't be less than personal let's go into that other sense of personhood because again I think this is troubling to a lot of people they envision the Trinity as three different persons and to them they think this means they're like three different people with unique intellects unique wills they're kind of going in three different directions maybe they're part of the same family so they share some common mission but they're really three distinct beings if you will right what do we mean when we use the word personhood visa via the Trinity we're getting the deep waters of course but you know the famous icon by roubloff that is one of my favorites of its the three angels visiting Abraham but it's meant to be a picture of the Trinity as well and you have these three figures around a table and they're raised in such a clever way I can't go into the details but but roubloff is signaling the different relationships within the Trinity the trouble is we tend to think of it that way like oh there's the father and then there's the sanno and there's the Holy Spirit these three as you say beings around a table well that can't be right because that's traicee ism that would compromise the divine unity you can't speak of the unconditioned reality as somehow breaking into three beings right so that's one extreme try theism however we can't go to the other extreme and say that the Trinitarian persons well that's just a way of talking about the three modes by which God manifested himself so in the old testament 'is manifested his father then in Jesus oh now he's manifested as the son and now on the life of the church he's manifested as the Holy Spirit that's called modalism or sub alien ISM after its founders Sebelius the idea there is that God is one supremely but then God can wear three different masks or have have three modes of appearance well to that the church also said no so no to try theism no to modalism and one way Brandon to read all of the history of Trinitarian theology is how do you navigate the narrow space between try theism and modalism and the way the church resolved that is with our great Trinitarian theology and now I'm getting to your question which is what do you mean when you say a the Father Son and spirit are persons you mean something very real so we're not talking about modalism at the same time you're not talking about splitting God into three things you're talking about I'll use Thomas's language now you're talking about three subsistent relations that obtain within the unity of God what do I mean I mean the father this or groans this primordial source the divine life as I say giving rise to the son therefore the father has a relation of paternity visa vie the son not let me correct myself because I said it wrong you shouldn't say the father has a relation of paternity rather the father is a relation of paternity to the son the son having been begotten by the father is a relationship of filiation visa vie the father the Holy Spirit now breathed forth by the father and the son is a relationship of active spy raishin that's the father and son in relation to the spirit and is passive spy raishin that's his own relationship visa vie that that is the relationship he is Visa be the father and son and see what I'm tripping up we always do it because our own language is so conditioned by things that have relationships but when Thomas says the Trinitarian persons are subsistent relations he's breaking that way of thinking right within the unity of God there are these three subsisting modes of relationality that we call father son and spirit now I love this how come we call them persons because I mean let's admit it when you say three persons it does sound like Rudolph's icon right it's this person that person the third person how come we call persons here's the gustin's answer so we have something to say when people ask us what they are you see his point is what we call them essences or substances or suppose it's or but but all those terms are problematic is person problematic mm-hmm but it's just so we have something to say when people ask us what are these three things what we'll call them persons for want of a better term I love how it is a descendant of Agustin st. Anselm of Canterbury refer to the three persons as Trez natio quid which means literally in latin 3 i don't know what's messy oh quit I don't know what they are because we don't have subsistent relations within our normal range of experience right we have things like you and I are two separate substances who right now are having a relation we're talking to each other right or I have a relation now to this camera over here I'm in front of it etc so it's substance with a relation the Trinitarian persons aren't like that they are subsistent relations and see that's why they don't violate the integrity of the divine unity well let's talk about one of the unique and great joys I know you have as a bishop and that's to do confirmation so you knew thousands of them every single year unfortunately now with the coronavirus academic they've been temporarily delayed but confirmations often described as the sacrament of the Holy Spirit it's like the one sacrament where the Holy Spirit is especially emphasized but I know a lot of people think well hey I thought when I'm baptized I received the Holy Spirit why do I need confirmation or what does confirmation do you've preached often on confirmation every confirmation you've been to so maybe give us a little overview of confirmation the Holy Spirit what happens there during this sacrament yeah good I mean the Holy Spirit's involved in all the sacraments necessarily because the Holy Spirit is that as I say by which the the accomplishment of the son is applied to our lives so the spirits involved in every sacrament you're quite right in saying baptism we are given the gifts of the Holy Spirit confirmation stirs it up confirmation as the name suggests confirm are a means to strengthen right it's strengthens the presence of these gifts of the Spirit in us so that at this moment a little later in life were able to court of claim them as our own so there's a tight link between Baptism and Confirmation you know in the ex the Apostles that great scene where they they discover that here's a group that had been baptized but they haven't yet received the spirit and so they say oh let's let's get our heavy weights let's get John and Peter to come down from Jerusalem and let's have them you know address these people and then through them the Holy Spirit comes upon them well that's the biblical ground for the relation between Baptism and Confirmation which is why it's not an absolute necessity but typically the church brings in the heavyweights it brings in the bishops to preside over confirmation because they're the successors of Peter and John right who presided and those in that early ceremony so I put it that way Brandon the confirmation is they confirming and stirring up of the gifts of the Spirit given at baptism well as you say along with the Holy Spirit comes these gifts that the Holy Spirit brings to every Christian and I'm reminded of that other colorful episode in the book of Acts where Simon Magus is a magician asks how do I get the Holy Spirit can I buy it from right offers to exchange money for the Holy Spirit it leads to a natural question if the Holy Spirit is so wonderful we want him to invade our lives our hearts and bring with him all these great gifts how do we receive the Holy Spirit and all these gifts well I would say you know in a Catholic context that's why we we attend and receive the sacraments the sacraments are the ordinary means by which God gives us the gifts of the Spirit so don't stay away from the sacraments if you want the gifts of the Spirit the ordinary means that Christ established is his church and and the church's sacraments so it's not a matter of triviality or indifference that so many Catholics stay away from the sacraments and why am I not you know being stirred up by the Holy Spirit well are you going to wear the Holy Spirit's on offer you know so I think that's how you do it but you also Brandon more generally you beg for the Holy Spirit you a lot of my prayer think of it that way is begging for the Holy Spirit that's what you do when you pray I remember years ago a spiritual teacher said to me when you pray you listen in as the father and son are speaking about you think about that for a second so we were using all this - psychical language but the father and the son aren't like just up out there someplace but they're there in us right we talk about the the the the indwelling of the Trinity in us so when I pray I listen in in a very conscious focused way as the father and son speak about me they in other words I'm now in the space of the Holy Spirit and I'm I'm listening well in that space all right Lord send your spirit give me your spirit stir up your spirit in me that's that's what you asked for when you pray that's what you listen in to hear when you pray can you think bishop of some time in your life where you've seen the undeniable action or voice of the Holy Spirit when you've sensed the Holy Spirit in a profound way oh gosh you know wait Brandon see it's your whole spiritual life is like that and and not typically in a spectacular way but if what's the Holy Spirit's name his spirit is is loved right he's the love between the father and the son he's called the vinculum amaura sometimes which means the chain of love right the chain that connects father and son he's also called in Aquinas and the great tradition donum day he's the gift of God okay whenever they're for real love breaks out and you and I've talked about this real love is not just the own having a nice feeling about somebody it's not just you know generosity love is to will the good of the other when that breaks out we say there there it is there's the Holy Spirit there's the Holy Spirit when forgiveness is is clearly evident that's the Holy Spirit right so think of those moments in your life when real love we forgiveness especially forgiveness of enemies is on display that's the unmistakable mark of the Holy Spirit you know one way to Brandon when I was doing spiritual direction with people that's one way to do it is just say okay what was the spirit up to in your life this past you know two weeks or past month what were the occasions and opportunities for love when did the spirit open a path for you to deeper love tell me about that tell me how you cooperated with it tell me how you resisted it tell me how you ignored it tell me how you you benefited from it that there's spiritual direction if you want in a nutshell those are all the signs I think of a spirit go back to Galatians five right and you got the gifts of the Spirit and the signs of the Spirit one of which is joy is when people that's our friend Chesterton to me is such a great model of someone filled with the Holy Spirit because it's the joyfulness and I sense that in people I consider really holy that's one of the great marks is their joyfulness [Music] well time now for a question from one of our listeners if you have one we'd love to hear it just send it in via ask Bishop Baron comm that's the website you want to go to and from there you can record your question on any device today we have one from Franco in New York and he's asking about how to arrange a personal chapel or a personal devotional area so you're just busting greetings bishop bang my name's Franco and I live in New York State drawing some inspiration from your private chapel I was wondering what type of things or what type of items would belong in a home devotional corner hmm thank you very much have a great day good you know I have a privilege as a bishop to have the Blessed Sacrament in my Chapel now that's a that's a rare thing and the church doesn't give that permission you know to anybody just have the Blessed Sacrament but shy event you know icons are their icons of saints that mean a lot to you even like a little candle III like when you enter into prayer that there's some gesture that you perform that signals to your body and your soul that we're doing something different and that can be like for example the lighting of a candle in front of a icon so I think the pictures of the saints I go back to this is years ago my thesis director Michel Corbin the great Jesuit scholar and I just begun work on my doctoral paper and he said Hova you know you you have to you have to do something and and I thought he was gonna refer to some book I had to get and he said you have to get an icon and put it next to your computer and I I did it in Paris I've done it to this day I have an icon next to my computer so when I write I'm doing it in a prayerful spirit so I would get it get a couple icons of your favorite Saints you can find a relic of a saint and you can come across those in different ways maybe put a relic of a saint up in that corner but something that signals to your body and your soul that we're doing something different now little crucifix or something and maybe the lighting of the candle that's a good thing well thanks for the question Franco and thanks all of you for listening a couple of bits of exciting news first of all for the last four years we've been secretly working on an extraordinary new project it's called the word on fire Bible and we're about to release the first volume of this Bible which contains the four Gospels now I'm not going to give any more details than that right now more will be rolling out here in the coming weeks I'm sure we'll do at least a whole episode or two on this extraordinary project but for now visit the website word on fire dot org slash Bible word on fire dot org slash Bible you can enter your email address on there and we'll send you all sorts of updates as the Bible gets ready to roll out it'll debut in the middle of June so not too far from here but you're gonna want to see this you're gonna want to be a part of it it's truly I think one of the most extraordinary initiatives we've ever released that word on fire and second just as a reminder check out our new book st. Catherine of Siena mystic a fire preacher of freedom it's by the great Dominican poet and theologian father Paul Marie who is a fellow of our word on fire Institute you can find that both again at word on fire show.com slash Catherine we have a great special deal running where if you buy the book you get four free digital access to our Saint Catherine of Siena pivotal players episode which you can watch on any device as well so check it out word on fire show.com slash Catherine thanks so much for tuning in and we'll see you next week on the word on fire show thanks so much for watching if you enjoyed this video I encourage you to share it and be sure to subscribe to my youtube channel [Music] you

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

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Length: 28min 8sec (1688 seconds)

Published: Mon May 04 2020