Category: Holy Spirit

It should have been a happy day, but tears flowed down my cheeks. I tried to stop them, to compose myself, to put on the expected reverent posture, but as I processed in for my 25^th Jubilee of religious profession, the tears would not be stopped.

They spilled out of a heart that was transfixed with wonder at 25 years of religious life. They had not been easy. A stroke, subsequent collapses, depression, TLE…. Feeling set aside because of illness in those very early years in your twenties when I wanted to throw myself into the apostolate…. Spiritual combat on every front against my own pride and anger and….

But here I was at the culmination of all that and so many more memories both positive and difficult…weeping…tears dripping from a heart that was suddenly, unexpectedly, transported out of our Motherhouse chapel in Boston to…amazement at the beauty of  my life and the God of wonder who was wrapping me in his presence and smothering me with a love that washed away the struggles so that only the morning dew of awe remained.

In Scripture “to fear God” is to be in awe of his power and knowledge. To fear God requires a daring heart!

Only a heart that fears God dares to believe that God created each one of us on this earth at this moment in time to know, love, and serve him in this life and to be happy with him forever. Can you dare to believe this about your family? Your enemy? The other both near and on the other side of the planet?

Only a heart that fears God can be joyful. Fear is a word that we typically interpret as referring to a state of emotional distress in the face of some danger to our personal safety. The term “fear of the Lord” appears over 100 times in the Old Testament. For example: And now, Israel, what does the Lord, your God ask of you but to fear the Lord, your God, and follow his ways exactly, to love and serve the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul (Deuteronomy 10:12). However, in the New Testament, the term is only mentioned two times and has been transformed into a sense of awe that is joyful rather than horrified. It is the gift of fear that gives us an unmistakable and irrefutable sense of God’s closeness and his ultimate victory over all evil in the world.

The gift of fear of the Lord gives us a greater sense of the greatness of God that should spark in our hearts a sense of amazement and awe that could bring us down to our knees. If we abandon astonishment we are left with a mediocre piousness.

To fear Him is to bow before mysteries we can never comprehend, like our freedom to choose, even though our free choices often have dire consequences for others, and another’s freedom to choose may have dire consequences for ourselves or one we love.

To St. Bonaventure fear of the Lord was “the most beautiful tree planted in the heart of a holy man which God waters continuously”  [II.6].  This “most beautiful tree” bears the precious fruit of love and reverence for God. Fear of the Lord for St. Bonaventure was the sort of trembling before experiences of God’s majesty that we hear perfectly encapsulated in the hymn:

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth
Our full homage to demand.

The fear that St. Bonaventure had in mind is sort of a continuum that spans a certain range—depending upon one’s perfection in the life of grace—from “servile fear” to “filial fear” to a fear cast out by love which has taken over one’s whole heart (cf. 1 John 4:17-18).

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 1:7) because it puts our mindset in its correct location with respect to God: we are finite, dependent creatures, and He is the infinite, all-powerful Creator.

Here are two things you can do to prepare your heart for the activation of the gift of the fear of the Lord:

• Give yourself amazing experiences. People who contemplate the grandeur of nature (even on the TV set or Youtube or in their backyard if necessary) are more likely to emerge from their own utilitarian mind-set of duty and obedience and open up to the awe and grandeur of the God whom we worship and whose closeness can be deeply treasured.
• Use Ignatius’ prayer method in praying with Scripture to more personally experience it. Rather than simple reading about the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, for example, a person could imagine the details of the sights, sounds, and smells of personally being there. Stanford University Anthropology Professor Tanya Luhrmann has found that individuals randomly assigned to go through Ignatian prayer exercises in which they engage in this kind of imaginative prayer are more likely to report awe-inspiring mystical experiences than those assigned to listen to lectures on the Gospels.

 

Prayer

“My Lord and my God, all my good consists in being united to you and placing all my hope in You. If my soul were left to itself, it would be like a puff of wind…. Without You I can do no good, nor can I remain steadfast.  Without You I cannot love You, please You. Therefore, I take refuge in You, I abandon myself to You, that You may sustain me by Your power, hold me by Your strength, and never permit to become separated from You” (St Bernard).

I sat in the California sun, across from a friend, with anger raging through my heart. This precious friend of mine had shared something she had been told a teacher in religious education class. Here 40 years later she struggled daily, crippled with fears and anxieties about God’s harsh judgment of her.

The son of another close friend is beginning the same journey. Thoughts of suicide every day. Buried under the ravages of OCD and scrupulosity. The “wisdom” of a confessor in those delicate early years of a conscious relationship with God had resulted in this. I think of Fr. Hammond, our pastor in the parish in which I grew up. Older, wiser, an everyday gentle presence among us in the school and in the confessional. Now, gone to heaven, he is still in my grateful thoughts.

I can’t tell you the number of people who have unconsciously built their spiritual lives around the counsel of a spiritual person or minister who, no doubt, struggled with their own relationship with God. It breaks my heart when someone tells me, for example, that  Father So-and-So told them they were going to hell because of some struggle they have. Even more, it infuriates me, because I have seen the twisted spiritual lives of those who have believed this nonsense.

Last night, I received an email from a mother asking for words of advice for her son, a young man with a failed business venture, failed relationships, lots of regret, and sunk in depression as black as midnight. Could I give her words of advice for him. I closed my computer. What were the magic words? I realized I did not know them. I was inadequate of myself. Insufficient. Poor. Afraid…. I went to bed and slept on it. I needed the Holy Spirit and his gift of knowledge.

The gift of knowledge is a supernatural habit by which we, under the action of the Holy Spirit, judge rightly concerning created things as related to eternal life and Christian perfection. It is not a question of philosophical or psychological knowledge, which gives a certain knowledge of things we can deduce by natural reason. It isn’t even a question of theological knowledge. It is, according to Jordan Aumann in Spiritual Theology, a question of a supernatural knowledge or “divine instinct” that comes from a special illumination of the Holy Spirit. Under the influence of this superior impulse and higher light we are able to judge rightly concerning created things in relation to their supernatural end.

Under the influence of knowledge activated by the Holy Spirit a person who is untrained theologically may be aware whether or not a maxim, or counsel, or devotion is in accord with the faith or opposed to it. I remember some women coming into our Pauline Books and Media Center in Metairie over twenty years ago looking for candles for the imminent three days of darkness that had been announced on a Catholic TV station. Observing the fear that motivated their request as they sought to ward off the impending doom, I steered them toward the Divine Mercy. Jesus never told us in the Gospels to be afraid. In fact, he told us NOT to be afraid. I don’t claim I was motivated by the gift of knowledge, but the Holy Spirit helped all of us see that this counsel given on the show they had watched was not in accord with the Gospels, and they left with greater peace and a means of spiritual devotion that was new to them.

It is by the gift of knowledge that preachers, confessors, ministers, teachers, spiritual directors, superiors, parents know what they ought to say to meet the spiritual needs of the persons before them. Saint Catherine of Siena once offered at the abbot’s invitation an impromptu spiritual conference in a monastery she had never been in before. Afterwards, the abbot told one of her companions that Catherine could not have offered a better conference if he had explained to her the spiritual journeys and struggles of each one. It was the gift of knowledge that had inspired her words to perfectly respond to the needs of each soul before her.

The gift of knowledge also teaches us how to use created things in a holy way. The contemplation of nature, of people, of events, of all the gifts of God should raise us to praise God, to go beyond them to adore the glory of God visible through them.

Here are two ways that you can prepare the ground, so to speak, for the activation by the Spirit of the gift of knowledge:

• Pause a bit before responding. Email and texting have trained us to respond as quickly as possible to others. Try doing as St Francis de Sales who bowed his head in a conversation for a few moments of silence before responding, begging the Holy Spirit to replace your thoughts with divine thoughts, your understanding of the situation or person with the wisdom of God who loves and cares for them. And if you are receiving another’s counsel–or even reading it in a book or hearing it in a sermon–pause long enough to ask the Spirit to guide you in listening so that you take in what is meant for you and let go of what is not. Don’t be afraid, especially when receiving advice that upsets you or goes counter to the Gospel, to “get a second opinion.”
• Cultivate a simple glance that raises itself to God whenever it looks upon created things. Let nature, people, events cause you to raise your heart in prayer, gratitude, petition, and praise.

Prayer

May you, O Holy Spirit, fill me with the gift of knowledge so that you can use me to speak your words to others, to bless others with advice that is not mine but yours. I am so poor. I can never know for certain what you want me to say, but from this moment I beg you to replace my thoughts with your thoughts, my words with your words, my actions with your actions. I beg you to use me!

“Get ready, Kathryn. A new season of your life is about to begin….” I heard those words about five years ago when I took refuge in the chapel after a particularly difficult experience. Actually, it wasn’t the first time I had heard those words whispered in my heart by God or experienced a changing season of life.

Twenty years ago, to identify one of these transition periods, everything was going wrong in my work in the mission, everything blocked by another I was working with. For a year I seemed to be treading water…or more accurately I was sinking. However, I remember speaking with my spiritual director at the time saying to my surprise, that as useless and counterproductive as the experience was, I also had a sense that everything was exactly as it should be. I couldn’t explain it. It made no sense. But a part of me was crying out to God that he certainly would do much better in evangelizing the world if the situation were different. Another part of me sank beneath his mighty hand and blessed him for my undoing.

Remember a time when circumstances left you confused, deflated, angry, unsure of the best way forward? It takes a lot of prudence to reason out the best steps to take, which options to choose, the most effective words you could say…. Without realizing, we could make these decisions based on what is fair, or what we feel, or what we want for ourselves. When we are hurt we can strike out at another even as we think we are responding virtuously.

When we need more than our own devices to understand what is happening in particular events in our life or judgments we need to make, it is the Holy Spirit’s gift of counsel that comes to our assistance. The gift of counsel operates under the impulse of the Holy Spirit, not according to what makes the most sense or is the most comfortable or gives us the most pleasure. The Holy Spirit can lead us to do or say or desire things for which our reason could never explain. Thus, even though the surface of the situation would seem to warrant an angry response that would set things straight for the improvement of the mission, there was a voice within me that said, “Get ready, a new season of your life is about to begin.” A season of contradiction and newness and loss and surprising transformation. A good season….

Sometimes a judgment is required that is beyond us at the time. Perhaps we don’t know how to combine firmness with mercy or there seems no way for us to guard a secret and at the same time meet the obligation of telling the truth. We might be responsible for other people and it is often difficult to know what is best for them. At times we don’t have time for sufficient research or reflection before a decision must be made. It is at times such as these that we want our decision to be the result of the operation of the gift of counsel.

So what habits in daily life will help us grow in responsiveness to the voice of the Spirit who is the Guest of our soul? Incorporate these two qualities of heart and you will prepare your soul for the more intense activation of the gift of counsel in your life:

• Develop the habit of speaking directly to the Holy Spirit, telling him that you don’t know what to do, which option is best, how to most effectively address another or a situation. And then beg the Holy Spirit for light and guidance. Begin to admit that despite every good intention and all our talents and gifts, in some circumstances only the Holy Spirit can bestow on us the wisdom we need to decide aright. We cannot snap our fingers for the Spirit’s guidance. We often will need to wait upon the Lord with patience and humility.
• Observe your experience when you are attached to your own judgments. St. John of the Cross in his Spiritual Maxims advises us: “Renounce your desires and you shall find that which your heart desires. How do you know if what you desire is according to God?” Notice how you experience is different when you act under the impulse of the Spirit. What is different? What are signs that tip you off that you are following your own judgments, and signs that indicate that you are obeying the Holy Spirit, moved by the gift of counsel? These can help you correct your path mid-stream so that you more frequently are seeking to please the Spirit.

Prayer

O Holy Spirit, I adore you present in my soul. I need you. Guide me. Show me the way to please the Father. Counsel me. Give me a wisdom beyond what I can figure out on my own. I promise to obey you. Only let me understand your will. Amen.

The Taize chant was soft. Slowly the choir began to implore the Spirit to descend on the ten adults to be baptized at the Easter Vigil.

Veni, Sancte Spiritus…

I closed my eyes. The chant moved through the congregation, rising stronger. The concelebrating priests gathered around the catechumens as the assembly invoked the Holy Spirit.

Veni, Sanctae Spiritus…

Warmth. Tears. O God…

It wasn’t a prayer. It was joy. Pure joy. Amazing wonder….

The gift of understanding is infused in the soul with sanctifying grace, by which the intellect, under the illuminating action of the Holy Spirit, grasps revealed truths with penetrating and profound intuition.

The “plus” of the gift of understanding is a simple intuition of truth, a type of infused contemplation. Our intellect is incapable of seizing the infinite, even though it lives of faith. The gift of understanding surpasses our human way of comprehension and enlightens us in a divine way. By the gift of understanding we “experience” what is true, we grasp the divine mysteries with the understanding of the Spirit himself in a way that produces a profound effect in the soul. It is a swift, deep penetration which makes us understand the inner meaning of the revealed truth.

By this gift we can understand the hidden meaning of Sacred Scripture. We can grasp the spiritual realities of created things. St. Thomas stated: “In this very life, when the eye of the spirit is purified by the gift of understanding, one can in a certain way see God.” As a result, we begin to see all things through the prism of faith, almost guided by divine instinct.

Here are two ways you can dispose yourself with the help of grace for the activation of the gift of understanding:

• The Holy Spirit is the friend of recollection and solitude. Jealously preserve times of spiritual rest and intentional silence. Invoke the Holy Spirit frequently.
• Be faithful to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit and the movement of grace within. Avoid thoughts, words, and actions that would sadden the Holy Spirit, and second every movement of the Spirit within you until you can say with Christ: “I always do what pleases him” (John 8:29).

Prayer

O divine Spirit! I beg you with confidence to illumine me. Reveal to me the divine greatness and the divine mysteries, so that I may adore and acknowledge them. Reveal to me what you wish of me so that I may correspond with complete fidelity. O loving Spirit, sustain me in this fidelity until death. Amen.

As a young sister, I remember being deeply impressed by the prayer of Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity which was shared with us during a community retreat. I had no familiarity with the writings of this Carmelite saint who had lived in Dijon France in the early 20^th century, but this most beautiful of prayers became a building block of my own spirituality from that moment to this day.

Elizabeth of the Trinity grounded her spiritual life and teaching in intimacy with the presence of the Divine Persons who live in the innermost part of our soul. God is present in us, she learned because he creates us at every moment. Through baptismal grace we become a spiritual temple in which the Holy Spirit, along with the Father and the Son, come and make their abode in us.

She wrote to a friend:

Did I tell you my name in the Carmel is Marie-Elizabeth of the Trinity? To me, this name means a special vocation. I love this mystery of the Trinity so much. It is an abyss in which I am lost. I am Elizabeth of the Trinity, that is, Elizabeth fading away, losing herself, letting herself be seized by the Three (Souvenirs, p. 70).

This special vocation became the whole meaning of her life:

This presence of God is so good! It is there, in my deepest self, in the heaven of my soul, that I love to find him, since he never leaves me. God in me, I in him, that is my life (Souvenirs, p. 69).

Have you ever wondered what to say when you pray to God? Does the idea of making an hour of Eucharistic adoration seem far beyond you? Do you wish you had a simple way of praying even in the midst of your busy day?

If we could speak with Elizabeth of the Trinity she would teach us to withdraw into the center of our soul and rest there. To simply say a few words to the Holy Spirit, such as, “Lord, the one you love is sick,” which were the words that Mary and Martha addressed to Jesus when Lazarus was dying. To quietly allow the Divine Persons to communicate with one another right there in your soul, not intruding with your own words and ideas and petitions. To bow before God who abides within you as Moses took off his shoes and knelt before the burning bush from which God spoke.

She wrote so many letters helping her friends and her mother to enter into the treasured abiding place of God within. “Make my soul…Your cherished dwelling place, Your home of rest. Let me never leave You there alone, but keep me there all absorbed in You, in living faith, adoring You.”

It belongs to the gift of wisdom to contemplate the divine. Through a special instinct and movement of the Spirit we penetrate the very life of the Trinity, as Elizabeth of the Trinity helps us understand. Those who experience the power of the gift of wisdom understand the words of the psalmist, “Taste and see how good the Lord is” (Ps 34: 9). The word taste means that there is a certain delight that is more than just feeling or excitement. There is an impulse that is truly divine that gives our hearts an ineffable joy that seems to be from heaven itself. Indeed, the gift of wisdom is surpassed only by the beatific vision which will be ours in eternity.

Souls that are under the Holy Spirit’s gift of wisdom love God because he is infinitely good and loveable. They love God for his own sake, not for any human motive of self-interest. Because they see God within them, they see God also in all things, in the smallest detail of their life, and in a special way in their neighbor. It is the gift of wisdom that allows us to see Christ in the poor, in those who suffer, in the heart even of the “enemy.” They are happy to deprive themselves, putting the interests of others before them.

When the Spirit actively operates within us with the gift of wisdom, we do not judge things from a purely natural and human point of view. When things don’t develop the way people want them to, it is not surprising that they accuse others for deliberately or inadvertently being the cause of their problems. Truly spiritual people, wise people, evaluate things, even unfortunate or contrary events, from God’s point of view and in a supernatural light, with a spirit of equanimity.

Here are two things you can do to dispose yourself for the activation of the gift of wisdom:

• Make a habit of asking God to show you where he is at work in all the events of your life. Even if you cannot understand what is happening, make an act of faith that God, who is within you, holds you safe in his hands.
• Make God the center of your life. Minimize things in your life that you don’t need anymore and refocus on what God wants to do with you and in you. Through acts of love for God and service to others, fan into flame a more intentional charity.

 

The prayer to the Trinity of St Elizabeth of the Trinity

O my God, Trinity whom I adore, help me to become utterly forgetful of myself so that I may establish myself in you, as changeless and calm as though my soul were already in eternity. Let nothing disturb my peace nor draw me forth f from you, O my unchanging God, but at every moment may I penetrate more deeply into the depths of your mystery. Give peace to my soul; make it your heaven, your cherished dwelling-place and the place of your repose. Let me never leave you there alone, but keep me there, wholly attentive, wholly alert in my faith, wholly adoring and fully given up to your creative action.

O my beloved Christ, crucified for love, I long to be the bride of your heart. I long to cover you with glory, to love you even unto death! Yet I sense my powerlessness and beg you to clothe me with yourself. Identify my soul with all the movements of your soul, submerge me, overwhelm me, substitute yourself for me, so that my life may become a reflection of your life. Come into me as Adorer, as Redeemer and as Savior.

O Eternal Word, utterance of my God, I want to spend my life listening to you, to become totally teachable so that I might learn all from you. Through all darkness, all emptiness, all powerlessness, I want to keep my eyes fixed on you and to remain under your great light. O my Beloved Star, so fascinate me that I may never be able to leave your radiance.

O Consuming Fire, Spirit of Love, overshadow me so that the Word may be, as it were incarnate again in my soul. May I be for him a new humanity in which he can renew all his mystery.

And you, O Father, bend down towards your poor little creature. Cover her with your shadow, see in her only your beloved son in who you are well pleased

O my `Three’, my All, my Beatitude, infinite Solitude, Immensity in which I lose myself, I surrender myself to you as your prey. Immerse yourself in me so that I may be immersed in you until I go to contemplate in your light the abyss of your splendor!