XXX — THE HOLY SPIRIT AND ACTIVITY

Presence of God. — O Holy Spirit, be the inspirer of my actions, the regulator of my activity.

Meditation

1 — The interior soul must gradually arrive at placing its whole life - and therefore not only its prayer but also its activity - under the Holy Spirit’s direction. Jesus Himself told us that He must “teach us all things and suggest everything to us” (cf. Jn. 14:26). Let us consider first that activity more closely connected with our spiritual life and consisting in trying during the day to carry out the good resolutions made in prayer: the resolutions of our yearly Retreats, our monthly recollections, our weekly confessions. Sometimes souls make of this an almost exclusively “moral” work and too little “theological” one; that is, they try to correct their defects and practice virtues with the intention of pleasing God, yes, but in practice they do it while remaining, so to speak, disconnected from God. The soul works alone, almost forgetting that there is One within it who could not only help it but work far better than it; it is somewhat like a sailor wholly intent on rowing, paying no attention to the breath of wind and thus receiving no help. The soul certainly must not neglect its work, but it must do it in a more interior, more theological way, that is, more dependent on God, on the Holy Spirit’s action. Rather than aiming directly at a defect or a virtue, it will greatly benefit by aiming at continual dependence on the inner Master, passing to action after listening to his intimate and silent voice. In short, it is a matter of acting in all things by adapting ourselves to grace’s interior movement, to the Holy Spirit’s inspiration; it is a matter of transferring the course of our interior life from our own hands to the Holy Spirit’s direction.

2 — Also in relations with neighbor, in carrying out daily duties, in professional activity, as in apostolic works, we must let ourselves be guided by the Holy Spirit. He must take the direction of all our conduct. For this purpose it is first necessary to remain in contact with Him even in the midst of action; brief moments of pause will help us from time to time to strengthen this contact or restore it when excessive activity or our passions’ impulses have in some way interrupted it. “I do nothing by myself,” Jesus said, “but I always speak in conformity with what my Father taught me” (Jn. 8:28). This was Jesus’ norm of conduct, and this must be ours: to act in continual dependence on God who, through his Spirit, suggests all we must do. In this field, however, one must also know how to distinguish the Holy Spirit’s inspirations from movements of nature and insinuations of the evil spirit. Without this prudent discernment, we would very easily expose ourselves to illusions and deceits, taking for divine inspiration what is instead fruit of more or less unconscious impulses of our flawed humanity, of our passions. An easy and practical rule for recognizing true inspirations of the Holy Spirit is to see whether they keep us and indeed make us enter ever more into the line of God’s will, that is, into the line of superiors’ commands, of the laws to which we are subject, of the duties of our state, or whether instead they make us leave or even only deviate from this line. In that case everything is to be feared, because the Holy Spirit can impel us only to fulfillment of God’s will and therefore cannot inspire anything contrary to obedience and our duties. In doubtful cases one must seek the counsel of an enlightened and prudent person, and then the soul truly guided by the Holy Spirit will be docile to bend to another’s judgment, even if contrary to its own.

The Holy Spirit, Jesus said, “will dwell in you and be in you” (Jn. 14:17); what enormous folly it would therefore be to act independently of Him who “has been given to us” (cf. Rom. 5:5) precisely to be our guide, our sanctifier.

Colloquy

“O Holy Spirit, You are the dispenser of the treasures that are in the Father’s bosom; You are the treasurer of the counsels held between the Father and the Word. You manifest to us those things we must do to please the Trinity; and You manifest them in the depths of the heart by your inspirations and outwardly through preaching and the counsels of your ministers. The gates of heaven are always open to send grace down, but we do not keep open the mouth of desire to receive it. Let this grace come, let it come; come, eternal Father, come, most pure Word, since You deign to send us your most loving Spirit, Spirit of goodness. O Holy Spirit, how rich You come for us, and blessed is he who receives You! You bring us the Father’s power, the Word’s burning love!” (cf. St. Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi).

“O Lord, make me know the way I must keep to reach You, teach me to do your will, and may your Spirit guide me on the straight path. Create in me, O Lord, a pure heart and infuse in me your Spirit, Spirit of rectitude and truth. My God, do not cast me away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me, because without Him I would remain deprived of life and grace. Sustain me, O Lord, by your magnanimous Spirit, without whom I could do nothing” (cf. Ps. 143 and 50[51]).

O Holy Spirit, Spirit of truth, who speak and instruct souls interiorly, make me attentive to your teachings and docile to your inspirations.