Cathal BarryThe Church teaches that faith is possible though the working of the Holy Spirit, writes Cathal Barry
“No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3). “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!”’ (Gal 4:6).
This knowledge of faith, according to the Church, is possible only in the Holy Spirit.
“To be in touch with Christ, we must first have been touched by the Holy Spirit,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church states.
“He comes to meet us and kindles faith in us. By virtue of our Baptism, the first sacrament of the faith, the Holy Spirit in the Church communicates to us, intimately and personally, the life that originates in the Father and is offered to us in the Son,” the Catechism teaches.
New birth
In the words of St. Irenaeus: “Baptism gives us the grace of new birth in God the Father, through his Son, in the Holy Spirit. For those who bear God’s Spirit are led to the Word, that is, to the Son, and the Son presents them to the Father and the Father confers incorruptibility on them. It is impossible to see God’s Son without the Spirit, and no one can approach the Father without the Son, for the knowledge of the Father is the Son and the knowledge of God’s Son is obtained through the Holy Spirit.”
Through his grace, according to Church teaching, the Holy Spirit is the first to awaken faith in people and to communicate new life, which is to “know the Father and the one whom he has sent” (Jn 17:3).
The Spirit, however, is the last of the persons of the Holy Trinity to be revealed.
Pedagogy
St Gregory of Nazianzus, the theologian, explains this progression in terms of the pedagogy of divine “condescension”:
“The Old Testament proclaimed the Father clearly, but the Son more obscurely. The New Testament revealed the Son and gave us a glimpse of the divinity of the Spirit. Now the Spirit dwells among us and grants us a clearer vision of himself. It was not prudent, when the divinity of the Father had not yet been confessed, to proclaim the Son openly and, when the divinity of the Son was not yet admitted, to add the Holy Spirit as an extra burden, to speak somewhat daringly… by advancing and progressing from glory to glory the light of the Trinity will shine in ever more brilliant ray.”
According to Church teaching, to believe in the Holy Spirit is to profess that the Holy Spirit is one of the persons of the Holy Trinity, consubstantial with the Father and the Son. As the Nicene Creed states: “with the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified.”
The Church teaches that the Holy Spirit is at work with the Father and the Son from the beginning to the completion of the plan for salvation.
It holds, however, that in these “end times”, ushered in by the Son’s redeeming Incarnation, the Spirit is revealed, given, recognised and welcomed as a person.