I find it easier to imagine God as Father and Son but the Holy Spirit leaves me struggling to form a mental concept which helps me to go to Him in prayer.
Think about it. We understand the image of “father” and His work of creating the heavens and earth. “Son” is also part of our human experience and the fact that he has taken human nature in Jesus helps me speak my human concerns to him.
But the Holy Spirit? How should I approach God in this form?
Let’s start from human our experience of “spirit”, small “s”. We speak of the “spirit” of many things. The spirit of springtime, friendship, loving, freedom, family reunion, etc. (We experience negative “spirits” as well: per- sonal loss, defeat, poverty, envy, jealousy, etc).
So we might say on a human level, spirit is experienced as a “feeling”. But is a feeling a real thing? Does it exist as an object in some way? What happens to that feeling when it goes away? Does it die?
Not exactly. It exists in our memory. Think how you felt when you held your first born or your first love relationship. The feeling comes back, right?! Recall riding your bike with no help! Spirit exists; it’s real but in a different way than rocks or trees or arms and legs. Are you sure your mother loves you? Off course you are! Why? I mean you can’t see it like an object.
You know she loves you because over the years you’ve experienced moments that have given you a sense of well being, happiness, and belonging. You can’t see it with your eyes, or put it into a bag, but you know it’s real. Let’s call it the spirit of love. So spirit is something “you know”. It may not have a feeling. It’s really real in your mind.
That’s “spirit” on the human level. What about God?
What follows here is what we know about God because of Jesus. Jesus knows his Father (in the same way described above, but even more so). “No one knows the Father except the Son and no one knows the Son except the Father” Matthew. 11: 27. “When you see me you see the Father for the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” John 14: 6-11 “The Father and I are one.” John 10:30.
With the union of Father and Son (both Divine), Jesus then says, “Whoever loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and my Father and I will come to him and live with him.” John 14: 23.
And that’s the Holy Spirit! The love of the Father for the Son (Jesus), and the Son for the Father IS A THIRD PERSON – – who is the love forever being shared between them. “God has poured out his love into our hearts by means of the Holy Spirit, who is God’s gift to us.” Romans 5:5
Back on earth now . . . Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit to remind us of all he had taught us…and…to empower us (the Church) to act in the person of Christ in the world.
So how do I think about the Holy Spirit? Is He different than the others? Do I pray to Him and not to the Father or Jesus?
Here’s where the doctrine of the Trinity comes in. There is ONE God. Within the one God there is a communion of Divine Persons. (There has to be, for God is love. How can God be love without “relationship”?).
So when we pray you don’t have to have a particular person of God in mind – – praying to one is praying to all. There is ONE God. (I think most people think first of Jesus when they pray – – that’s just fine. In the end there are moments when we turn to each of them for special need.)
The Holy Spirit is the person of God’s love. “Come Holy Spirit, be with me, let me know your love.”
Fr. Tim
