1. Catholics and Protestants have different understandings of the work of the Holy Spirit. Historically, the Catholic understanding has been more implicit than explicit. And today the explicit understanding of the Spirit for many Catholics may be derived from Protestant ideas. Instead, I find Fr. Luigi Giussani's description of the Holy Spirit's work to shed light on the traditional Catholic understanding: "The Spirit is what makes us perceive God in the light of the senses, it enables us to experience Him. The Spirit is the principle whereby God, who is invisible, becomes perceivable" (Book of Hours, Wednesday).
2. For Catholics, what are the great examples of the work of the Holy Spirit?
- The Annunciation to Mary;
- The Transubstantiation of the Eucharist (Eu-Charis);
- Charisms, or gifts of the Spirit to the Church through the saints (on earth or in heaven). "A charism is an ultimate terminal of the Incarnation, that is, it is a particular way in which the Fact of Jesus Christ Man and God reaches me, and through me can reach others” (Giussani).
4. This answer is complicated by the prevalence of fideism among Catholics, who – like everybody else – tend to think of salvation as escape from the body and circumstances instead of discovering the vanishing point of destiny in the everyday.
9 comments:
"The Transubstantiation of the Eucharist"
Uh-oh. I thought this was something Jesus does, not the Holy Spirit.
I agree with Giussani's understanding (though I wouldn't refer to the Spirit as a "what," an "it," or a "principle"). The Holy Spirit is, rightly, the hidden member of the Trinity. He doesn't point to himself but to Christ. Therefore, pneumatology should quickly turn into Christology. Karl Barth was right, against his critics who thought his doctrine of the Spirit to be lacking.
It seems that Protestants have nonetheless given greater attention to the Holy Spirit because Protestants give greater attention to the work of Christ for salvation, which invariably yields doctrine and piety focused on the required conversion by the Holy Spirit. Catholics, by comparison, give greater attention to the person of Christ, including his mother and the saints who conform to him.
@kkollwitz: The epiklesis of the Spirit is explicit in the post-reform liturgical texts (implicit in the Roman Canon): "Let your Spirit come upon these gifts to make them holy, so that they may become for us the body and blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ."
Kevin: it's fascinating if a bit scandalous that Christianity has at its heart a cult of personality around Jesus of Nazareth. And I'm not so sure that mission can be neatly separated from circumstances or personality: in Jesus's life or in anybody else. Jesus announced the nearness of God and His mercy in Judea and trusted others to announce that nearness in Samaria, Greece, India, China, England, the Americas.
If God chose to save me through the human-divine person of Jesus in history, then who am I to abstract this salvation from its original character?
Nonetheless, I believe you are right that there is sometimes an overly personal color to Catholic devotions not unlike a similar trend among some Evangelicals: the net effect of this is to reduce the work of Christ to an emotional inspiration...
Look, I second Kevin but more vociferously. The Holy Spirit is a person, not a principle. "He" not "it." Likewise, Jesus is God, not merely the means by which God chooses to save us. Christianity - that is, the Church - is not a "cult of personality," and our focus on Christ is no scandal.
Not to quibble or anything, but I think anything less is rank heresy.
Fitzhamilton - you're quibbling.
Someone very close to me indeed stumbles over (scandalon) the the peculiarity of Christianity - he believes that by acknowledging Jesus as unique we have thereby disqualified ourselves from ever speaking of a universal or catholic truth for all humanity. Just because you do not stumble, don't presume that others don't: Jesus said after all blessed is He who is not scandalized by me (meaning that He know quite well many were and would be).
I affirm and proclaim everything that the Catholic Church teaches without exception, and I regret we live in an age when any commentator can cry heresy at a phrase that contradicts their own chosen beliefs (or seems to contradict them, not having made much effort to understand the context).
Kevin,
Good question. I guess Congar was right in saying that there can be no christology without a pneumatology and vice versa.
At the same time, looking at the economy of salvation this also gives way to an ecclesiology. So I cannot really understand "work of the Spirit of Christ" apart from His Body, the Church. For example, I remember a friend of mine telling me, "what you told me two months ago changed my life. it brought me to Christ." I don't remember what I said, and that I said what I said. Now, who was the agent? Who changed her, gave her the words? The Holy Spirit or me? I think that's our experience, right? We usually say, rightly, "thank Christ, not me. It was probably the Holy Spirit working through me." I guess it is the same way with the saints.
Tell me what you think.
Reading the quote from Msgr. Giussani again today I see that "it" doesn't actually refer to the Holy Spirit but to His mission as a distinct Triune person.
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