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Chapter 1. The Devotion of the Catholic Church to the Holy Ghost

  1. GOB is One in absolute perfection; and in that Unity there is no distinction except by the relations which constitute the Persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.1 All divine worship is there fore given to the Three Persons equally in One God, and in like manner all divine perfections are common to the Three Per sons, and none is proper to any so as not to belong equally to all. So also all the divine operations in the creatures of God are alike common to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Nevertheless the Son has a relation to

1 Concil. Lat. IV. cap. 2, Damnamus eryo*

B the creatures proper to Himself, because He alone is incarnate; He alone has united our manhood to Himself by the hypostatic union.

So also the mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Ghost are proper to each as sent and as coming into the world.

And this is the reason or cause of the appropriation1 to the Son of the office of Redeemer, and to the Holy Ghost of the office of Sanctifier; nevertheless not as excluding the other Divine Persons from the work of redemption and of sanctifi cation.

Charity, and the operations of charity and of grace ad extra, are appropriated to the Holy Ghost. They express His hypostatic character as the term of the Procession of the Love of the Father. and of the Son. The Procession is proper to the Holy Ghost, but the operations are common to the Father and to the Son.

  1. In this sense, then, we can and ought, under the guidance of the Church, to contemplate the operations of the Holy Ghost in the souls of the faithful, in the Church, and in the blessed in heaven. These are relations and operations common, indeed, to the Three Persons, but appropriate to the Holy Ghost. And in this office of appropriation, and in these appropriate relations, we can and ought to adore, honour, venerate, and invoke the Holy Ghost; but in this divine and distinct worship we never exclude the Father and the Son. In the three invocations of the Litany we invoke and adore in succession the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost; but in each we invoke and adore the Holy Trinity, as when we invoke the Holy Trinity, One God, we invoke the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The appropriate mission and office of the Holy Ghost, then, is that of the Spirit of Truth, or of the Illuminator and the Sanctifier. 'The charity of God is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Ghost, who is given to us f so the sanctifying grace, or the grace by which we are made holy, is poured out in our hearts and imparted to us by the Holy Ghost, who dwells in us. Such is our sane tin" cation and the office of the Sanctifier.

  2. While, then, we always bear in mind that all the works of almighty power are works of the Ever-Blessed Trinity, of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and that God is therefore our Creator, our Re deemer, and our Sanctifier, we may contemplate the true and divine sense of appropriation in which we say that the Father is our Creator, the Son our Re deemer, and the Holy Ghost our Sanctifier. It is in this latter sense that we speak of devotion to the Holy Ghost as our Sanctifier. We shall never exclude the Father and the Son from the divine action of our sanctification, which is proper to all the Three Persons as God; but we may speak of the office which is appropriate in the divine economy to the Third Person, that is, to the Holy Ghost.

This appropriation, then, as we have seen, arises from two distinct reasons: the one is that the communication of sanctity has a special affinity to the Per son of the Holy Ghost; the other, that as the Son had a special mission into the world to redeem mankind, so the Holy Ghost has a special mission into the world to sanctify those who are faithful to the Redeemer.

  1. The Church throughout the world loves and adores the Son in His mission, His Incarnation, His coming, His Passion, Resurrection, Ascension, and glory, as Head of the Church, at the right hand of the Father, and His perpetual presence in the midst of us in the Holy Sacrament of the Altar.

So also the Church loves and adores the Holy Ghost in His mission, His advent on the day of Pentecost, His indwelling presence in the Church, His perpetual assistance which preserves the Church from error, His operations in the Seven Sacraments, and in His inward presence by actual grace in every individual soul, and by habitual grace in all who are sanctified.

For this cause we worship the Incarnate Son at Christmas and the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, which S. Augustine calls the Dies Natalis Spiritus Sancti, the Nativity of the Holy Ghost.

In its most solemn actions the Church specially invokes and worships the Holy Ghost. The (Ecumenical Councils, in which the whole Church is present, are congre gated in the Holy Ghost. Their first act is to offer the Mass of the Holy Ghost. They invoke His guidance twice by the Veni Creator Spiritus, and by the prayer Adsumus Domine Sancte Spiritus advenius... in Nomine Tuo specialiter aggregati. And what is done in an (Ecumenical Council is done in every Council of a province and every Synod of a diocese.

The Mass and the Office of Pentecost are the solemn and public adoration of the Holy Ghost by the Church; the Hymns of the Holy Ghost, the Office, and the Litany are the response of the faithful to this authoritative devotion of the Church in its divine tradition and its universal ritual.

In this the Church perpetuates the mind and voice of the Apostles. In the New Testament the Holy Ghost is named ninety times, and as the Holy Spirit forty times; so present and so prominent were the mission and the dispensation of the Holy Ghost in the faith of those who had received the illumination of the day of Pentecost, and were kindled by its tongues of fire.

The Epistles of S. Paul are pervaded by the consciousness of the presence of the Holy Ghost in the Church,3 in our bodies,4 in our hearts,5 and of His office as the Spirit of Wisdom,6 of adoption,7 of sanctification.8

So, too. the mission and presence of the Holy Ghost were habitually in the minds of

« Ephes. ii. 22. « S. John xv. 26.

4 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20. T Rom. viii. 15.

• Gal. iv. 6. • Rom. xv. 16.

the first Disciples of the Apostles, and in the Fathers of the Church, as in S. Irenseus, S. Basil, S. Ambrose, and S. Augustine.

So likewise in the Doctors of the Church, as S. Bonaventure and S. Thomas, to whom is ascribed the Veni Creator Spiritus.

So also in the Saints, as in S. Francis, S. Philip, S. Teresa, who all were known by their special devotion to the Holy Ghost, our Light and Sanctifier.

If, then, it should seem to any one that this call to love and adore the Holy Ghost be new and unused in the Church, let him rather examine and see whether he be himself in harmony with the mind of the Church; for the mind of the Church is the mind of the Spirit by Whom all the divine worship and all the special devotions of Fathers and Doctors and Saints are inspired, and from Whom they flow.

Footnotes

  1. Card. Franzelin, De Deo Trino, sect. i. th. xiii. p. 208. ↩

Chapter 1 of 18