At first I thought of titling this comment “God’s Interpreter”, but then I reflected that it would be reductive, because the Holy Spirit is much, much more. I’ll tell you about it here:
The Holy Spirit this unknown. Of the Persons that make up the Holy Trinity, it is the least known, yet it plays a fundamental role in our knowledge of God, in our way of entering into a relationship with Him: it is the engine that pushes our prayer to the heart of God, the battery that it gives us the strength to pray and the vehicle on which the grace sent to us by God reaches us.
God is bigger. It’s an elusive concept, which I often deal with: God is greater than the very idea that we may have of Him. He is boundless, unlimited, omnipresent and omnipotent. Wherever we move in space and time we always find all of God there watching us. He is all next to you, who are reading these lines. But God is simultaneously and integrally present alongside each of us, whether we think so or whether our mind is somewhere else entirely. And he is in every drop of the sea, in every subatomic particle, just as he is found in the vastness of boundless spaces. Because everything is the place of God. Immensely large and immensely small equally contain it, but, at the same time, nothing can contain it because it is unlimited. You see? God is greater than any concept that even attempts to quantify him, to describe him.
It is said that Saint Augustine was walking by the sea one day. There he saw a child who, with a bucket, continued to draw water from the sea and then pour it into a small hole that he had dug in the sand. He asked him: “What are you doing?” He replied: “I want to pour all the sea water in here.” “Just as it is not possible to collect all the sea water in a small ditch – commented the saint – so God, who is infinitely large, cannot be understood by a small mind”. “If you could totally know God – concluded Saint Augustine – either you would be God, or God would no longer be God”.
The Holy Spirit helps us understand the vastness of God. The Holy Spirit helps us understand that God is greater than our sin and his love is an ocean in which we can dive without fear of being overwhelmed: forgiving, for God, means giving us the certainty that He never abandons us. Whatever we may reproach ourselves for, He is still and always greater than everything (cf. 1 Jn 3.20), because God is greater than the worst of our sins.
Too often we allow ourselves to be carried away by erroneous conceptions about God, so much so that when we commit evil, we feel overwhelmed and devoured by our sin. We imagine God as a severe judge, ready to punish us. On the contrary, God is a father. He is the prototype of all fathers. And what father wants evil for his children? As Saint Luke the Evangelist observes: «If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!» (Luke 11,13).
This Father who loves us so much that he sent his own Son to earth and allowed him to give his life for us, did even more: he gave us the Holy Spirit. Spirit who gives life: after having formed man from the mud the Lord God “he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living soul” (Genesis 2, 7). The Holy Scripture therefore makes us understand that God intervened through his breath or spirit to make man an animated being. In man there is a “breath of life”, which comes from the “breathing” of God himself. In man there is a breath or spirit that resembles the breath or spirit of God.
On Easter evening, the risen Jesus, appearing to the disciples in the Cenacle, renews on them the same action that God the creator had performed on Adam. God had “breathed” on man’s body to give it life. Jesus “breathes” on the disciples and tells them: «Receive the Holy Spirit» (John 20, 22). The human breath of Jesus thus serves to implement a divine work even more marvelous than the initial one. It is not just a question of creating a living man, as in the first creation, but of introducing men into divine life. There is a breath of God inside you. Always remember this!
Source: La Buona Parola, Alessandro Ginotta’s blog https://www.labuonaparola.it
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