Who Is the Holy Spirit?

"There is a certain difficulty in speaking about the Holy Spirit, even a certain danger. He withdraws from us into mystery even more than Christ. It is quite possible that this topic has sparked only idle speculation and that human life is being based upon self-made fantasies rather than reality. This is why I hesitated to offer just my own reflections. It seems to me that three conditions must be fulfilled to speak meaningfully, reliably, and defensibly about the Holy Spirit.

First it cannot be talk based upon pure theory but must touch an experienced reality that has been interpreted and communicated in thought.

But experience alone does not suffice. It must be tested and tried experience so that 'one’s own spirit' does not take the place of the Holy Spirit.

Third: in consequence, suspicion will always arise when someone speaks on his own account, 'from within.' Such speech contradicts the Holy Spirit’s mode of being, for he is characterized precisely 'by not speaking on his own' (Jn 16:13). In this respect, originality and truth can easily lead to a paradox. But that means that trust is only appropriate when one does not speak on a purely private account, but from an experience of the Spirit tested in front of and standing in the context of the whole, i.e. when one submits the experience of 'spirit' to the entirety of the Church. This presupposes as an axiom of Christian faith that the Church herself — when she truly exists as Church — is a creation of the Spirit."

"The Holy Spirit as Communio: 

Concerning the Relationship of 

Pneumatology and Spirituality

 in Augustine" by Joseph Ratzinger 

Communio 25 (Summer 1998). 

Line breaks are mine.

 

Thanks to Clare for posting this quote in the comments. Also, when I get a chance, I'll add a couple of posts on the place of the Bible for Catholics. I'll start with the good news and then I'll note some concerns.

Ecclesia Sunday

Today's readings: 

"A prophet like me will the LORD, your God, raise up for you from among your own kinsmen; to him you shall listen." (NAB, from Dt 18:15-20).

"A new teaching with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him" (NAB, from Mk 1:21-28).

And something that Joseph Ratzinger has written about this theme:

"because the dispersion of Israel continued on and slavery was reimposed, a qahal coming from God himself, a new gathering and foundation of the people, increasingly became the center of Jewish hope. The supplication for this gathering — for the appearance of the ecclesia — is a fixed component of late Jewish prayer.

It is thus clear what it means for the nascent Church to call herself ecclesia. By doing so, she says in effect: This petition is granted in us. Christ, who died and rose again, is the living Sinai; those who approach him are the final gathering of God's people" (Called to Communion, J. Ratzinger, Ignatius Press, 31). 

The passage above follows a section on "Jesus and the Church." Ratzinger quips that "the kingdom was promised, what came was Jesus [...] but Jesus is never alone" (23). The twelve symbolize the 12 tribes of Israel, while the 72 symbolize the nations, the gentiles — and notably, the Septuagint, translated into Greek by 72 scholars, is the form of the Hebrew scriptures which is adopted by the Christian Church. 

Blondel and Ratzinger on Tradition

Blondel on “Tradition” pt. 2 at After Existentialism, Light.

Joseph Ratzinger, 1998:

This sheds light once again on “spiritual” [geistlich] office in the Church and on its theological location, which the tradition has defined with the term successio apostolica. “Apostolic succession” means precisely the opposite of what it might appear to mean, namely, that through the continuous chain of succession we become as it were independent of the Spirit. Linking to the line of succession in fact means that the sacramental office is never simply at our disposal, but must be given each time by the Spirit, that it is precisely the spirit-sacrament, which we can neither create nor institute ourselves. Functional competence as such is not by itsel sufficient for that, the Lord’s gift is necessary. In the sacrament, in the Church’s representative, symbolic action, the Lord reserves to himself the permanent institution of the priestly ministry. The totally specific combination of “once” and “always” characteristic of the mystery of Christ appears very beautifully here. The “always” of the sacrament, the presence of the historical origin in every age of the Church, implies a link with the ephapax, with the event of the origin that happens once only. This link with the origin, this stake planted in the ground of the once-only and unrepeatable event, is nonnegotiable. We can never take refuge in a free floating pneumatology, we can never leave behind the ground of the incarnation, of God’s action in history. But the converse is also true. This never-to-be-repeated event imparts itself in the gift of the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of the risen Lord. It does not vanish, like something dead and gone, into the forever irretrievable past, but has the force of the present, because Christ has passed through the “curtain, that is, through his flesh” (Heb 10:20: RSV) and has thereby released what endures forever in what takes place only once. The incarnation does not stop with the historical Jesus, with his “sarx” (2 Cor 5:16!). The “historical Jesus” has eternal significance precisely because his flesh is transformed in the resurrection, so that he can make himself present to all places and all times in the power of the Holy Spirit, as the farewell discourses in John wonderfully show (cf. especially Jn 14:28: “I go and I come to you”: RSV). 

(Ratzinger, "Theological Locus," p 485-6. 
Large text for emphasis is mine)