"The Stranger who comes from beyond the Word". It is with this expression, used by H. U. von Balthasar, that it is possible to create a brief theological synthesis on the subject of the Holy Spirit. "A Stranger" for a least two reasons: the first, of a theological nature, is determined by the fact that never to this extent have we been faced with mystery. He is Spirit of Love and refers to the sublimity of God’s very essence in the revelation of Jesus Christ, who in obedience gives Himself unto death and is resurrected. Human language encounters great limitations with its words always imprisoned inside that "cage" –to use an expression dear to L. Wittgenstein- which prevent one from expressing what constitutes the essence of mystery. It is therefore with reason that our brothers in the East suggest that it is better to invoke the Spirit rather than to speak of him; he, in fact, is grace bestowed by the love of the Father. Theologians therefore understand that for a coherent understanding they must acquire an attitude of surprise and silent receptiveness.

The second reason, in historical order, depends on the fact that for a long time theology forgot to keep under strict observation the understanding of the mystery of the gift of the Spirit. This resulted in weak theology because it was deprived of the centrality of the Trinitarian mystery, and therefore fragmentary in its exposition of mysteries. The marginalization of the subject of the Spirit only to the sphere of spirituality prevented the achievement of a coherent theology by ministers and secular authors. The recovery of the central position that is owed to studies on the Holy Spirit has allowed the verification, during recent decades, of the delay imposed on theology’s progress both in responding to its ecclesial mission and in giving voice to the strength of prophecy.

So who is the Holy Spirit? "If you wish to know what your thought should be about the Holy Spirit, it is necessary for you to return to the Apostles and the Gospels with whom and in which you are certain that God has spoken " (See The Holy Spirit, I, 9). This text by Faust, bishop of Riez in the mid fifth Century (452/460?) allows theologians to once again discover the correct method for stuttering a few words about the mystery of the Spirit of Christ. "Return to the Apostles and the Gospels". This is the original source of Christian faith: Tradition and Scriptures in their inseparable unity and in full reciprocity which permits one to seize the only Word that God spoke to humanity (see DV 9).

"Let us now examine our current knowledge regarding the Holy Spirit, both the information acquired from the Scriptures and that passed down to us by the unwritten tradition of the Fathers…The Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Truth who comes from the Father, the Righteous Spirit, the Guiding Spirit. His most appropriate name is Holy Spirit, because this name indicates the most bodiless, intangible, and exempt from composition Being. Because the Lord taught the Samaritan woman, who was persuaded that God should be worshipped in a place, that the intangible cannot be enclosed by limitations and He told her: God is Spirit. Therefore, those who hear the word "Spirit" cannot imagine a limited nature, undergoing mutations and changes, or similar in any way to a created thing". These are the words of Saint Basil, monk and bishop of Caesarea, who wrote his treatise on the Holy Spirit in the year 375.

The Scriptures prefer to speak of the Spirit as "ruah": "gust", "air", "spirit", "wind", "breath"... all realities in which, using the words spoken by Jesus "thou can hear the sound of it, but know nothing of the way it came or the way it goes" (John 3,8); one perceives, therefore, His presence and strength, but we are unable to say more, because he is surrounded by the mystery of God’s life. The Council of Constantinople in professing: "He is the Lord and gives life", attempted to provide depth to the teachings of the Holy Scriptures which always place the Holy Spirit in connection with life. The Psalmist renders explicit the Genesis text when he states: from the word of Gods the heavens were created, and from the breath of His mouth all things (see Psalms 33, 6). Hence the Spirit is the breath that comes from the mouth of God and that creates all things, giving life. Michelangelo’s genius in the fresco in the Sistine Chapel proved an artistic representation of the teaching. The "digitus paternae dexterae" of the Veni Creator, is what gives life to mankind and supports all things (see Psalms 8, 5). It is so true that "if He turn His heart to Him, He shall draw His Spirit and breath unto Himself. All flesh shall perish together, and man shall return into ashes" (Job 34, 14). In a word, the Spirit is the power and the strength of God, through him all comes to light and all is accomplished.

The Holy Spirit therefore is the protagonist of the entire history of redemption. Each time God intervenes in the history of His people to free them and to show them the accomplishment of His promises; it is always the Spirit who accompanies Him. Battles are won thanks to his power; equally it is his strength that transforms men allowing them to accomplish the mission entrusted to them. And it is also the Spirit who "invests Gideon" or who "penetrates Samson" providing them with the strength necessary for victory. It is always the same Spirit who descends on the king, crowns him and protects him so that he may reign over all his people in the name of God: from that day on the Spirit of the Lord was bestowed on David (see Sam 16, 13).

His work was to become even more visible with the prophets. A prophet is a man called upon by the Spirit of Jhwh so that his voice may be heard in the most varied situations of history. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel just like Amos, Osee and all the minor prophets, even if this is not explicitly mentioned for fear of misunderstandings, express the awareness of having received the call and having been "kidnapped" to the prophetic mission by the Spirit of the Lord. Ezekiel’s words apply to all of them: "And the Word of the Lord came to me saying: Speak" (Ez 11, 5). The prophet becomes possessed by the Spirit and "the mouth" through which God makes His own voice heard. In this context it is interesting to observe how a number of the Fathers of the Church have wished to describe the Spirit as God’s "mouth". Simeon, the new Theologian, who lived in 1022, wrote as follows in his Book of Ethics: "God’s mouth is the Holy Spirit and the Word is His Son, who is also God. But why is the Spirit called God’s mouth and the Son called the Word? In the same way in which an internal thought comes out of our mouths and is revealed to others, without us being capable of pronouncing it or making it manifest in any other manner than with our mouths, the very Son and Word of God, if not expressed or revealed by the Holy Spirit, as if by a mouth, cannot be known or understood".

The Holy Spirit is fully revealed by Jesus Christ. In what is almost a harmonious synthesis of the entire gospels written by Luke and John, Saint Gregory Nazianzene writes: "Christ is born and the Holy Spirit precedes Him; He is baptized and the Spirit is His witness; He is tempted and the Spirit leads Him back to Galilee; He performs miracles and the Spirit accompanies Him; He ascends to heaven and the Spirit succeeds Him" (Discourses xxx, 29). The Spirit in fact rests fully on Christ and accompanies His entire existence. It is because Jesus fully possesses the Holy Spirit that He in able to bestow him in abundance and with no limitations to those who believe in Him (see John 7, 37-39). The new creation accomplished by Jesus, through the sacrifice of His death and the Resurrection, becomes clear when He bestows His Spirit upon the disciples gathered in the Cenacle with: "He breathed on them and said to them: Receive the Holy Spirit" (John 20, 22). So that the Church might be strong in its announcement, coherent in its life and capable of providing forgiveness and love to everyone, the bestowal of the Holy Spirit on the Pentecost marks the official beginning of the mission undertaken by Jesus’ disciples in the world.

The Holy Spirit is a gift from the Father and the Son; his work is fully Trinitarian of a relational nature that forms the everlasting pericoresis of the full and complete reciprocal giving by the three divine persons: "because it is from me that He will derive what he makes plain to you" (John 16, 14-15). The Spirit’s mission therefore, is to make understood what Jesus has revealed. The revelation of the Spirit is not his own; it can only be what the Logos has pronounced having heard it from the Father. But the understanding of a mystery is no less important than its contents. Each understanding represents a renewed act in which the Church sees and experiences the presence of its Lord who has never abandoned it and who always follows and protects it in the course of history. It was once again the teachings of Faust of Riez which allowed the perception of this concept: "Our existence seems to be referred to the Father "in Whom" as the Apostle said, "we live, we move and we exist" (At 17, 28); our ability to be capable of reason, of knowledge and of justice is instead attributed in particular to He who is reason (logos), knowledge and justice, that is the Son. Through the word of God, then, it is to the Holy Spirit that our call to regeneration, the consequent renewal and the following sanctification, are clearly ascribed… You might say that: the Holy Spirit, whose work is more important and noble, is greater. This is not the case…although individual persons accomplish acts on their own, the common design remains in the trinity "(I 10).

The Church, already present in the group of disciples who had followed the Lord for three years forming a community with Him, was born in that effusion of the Spirit already marked on the Cross and in the blood and water that seeped from the wound opened on the Crucifix. Then, on the day of the Pentecost, the Spirit had the strength to present itself to the world as a witness of the Lord’s resurrection. And just as Jesus had inaugurated His public mission with the sermon on conversion and forgiveness, the Church too follows in Christ’s footsteps, proclaiming its first speech dedicated to conversion and faith in the Lord Jesus. (At 2, 14). The division of Babel, the fruit of sin, was destroyed by the Pentecost, recreating unity through the Spirit. It is the Spirit who provides the apostles with strength to open the barred door of the cenacle where they had gathered "in fear" and leads to the evangelization mission. What does however emerge, in such an original manner that it creates discontinuity with the Jewish mentality and customs, is that in Jesus the Spirit is bestowed upon each person. Joel’s prophetic vision which envisaged the expanding of the prophetic Spirit to all the sons and daughters of Israel comes true and becomes visible in the community of believers.

Just as the Spirit had accompanied Jesus, he now accompanies His Church. In observing the different communities and their internal life which is structured progressively, he shows his omnipresent work. It is he who revealed to the apostles where to go and where not to go (At 16, 6-10); it is he who provided each of them with the charisma necessary for creating a community (1 Cor 12,7); it is the Spirit himself who provided the apostles with the words they needed so as to defend themselves during trials (Luke 12.11-12), and it is the Spirit of the Risen that allowed Steven to provide his supreme testimony (At 7). It is this same Spirit who inspired the holy authors to put into writing the gospels and the teachings of the apostles so that the Church might in the future have a constant reference for its life; and it was once again the same Spirit who guided the incessant passing down of all that has not been written, but that is the eternal faith for everyone. It is the Spirit of Truth that is never absent in the history of the Church; this allows all believers to remain intact in that "feeling of faith" (LG12) which permits even the most simple to understand the nature of the faith and provides certainty to the Ministers united with Peter in their interpretation of the gospels of truth.

The words of one of the last authors of Roman literature in the 3^rd Century, Novaziano, are in this sense even more meaningful: "The Spirit creates the prophets in the Church, instructs the teachers, organizes languages, works prodigies and healings, accomplishes wonderful acts, concedes the perception of spirits, assigns command roles, provides advice, makes available and distributes all other gifts; in this he makes the Lord’s Church perfect and complete in all places and in all things….he bears witness to Christ in the apostles, shows our strong faith in the martyrs, surrounds the virgins with the wonderful chastity of mercy, in others he preserves the precepts of the Lord’s doctrine unaltered and uncontaminated, he destroys the heretics, corrects the infidels, unmasks the liars, holds back those who are evil, preserving the Church uncorrupted and inviolate in the sanctity of eternal virginity and truth " (The Trinity, 26, 10-26).

Saint Maximus the Confessor moves on the same wavelength: "Men, women, children, deeply divided by race, nation, language, class, work, science, dignity, and possessions... all these are recreated by the Church in the Spirit. It impresses them all equally with a divine form. They all receive from the Church a unique nature impossible to break, a nature that does not allow them to consider the multiple and profound differences that concern them. Hence we are all united in a really Catholic way. Within the Church no one is separated from the community, everyone is joined, so to speak, one with the other by the indivisible strength of faith. Christ is therefore everything in everyone, He who assumes all within Himself according to His infinite strength and communicates to everyone His goodness. He is like a center into which all lines converge. Therefore all the unique God’s creatures no longer remain unknown or enemies one with the other because of the lack of a common place in which they manifest their friendship and their peace" (Mystagogy, I). As you can see, through the gifts we receive we are able to recreate the sublimity of He who bestows them.

The entire life of the Church had taken place, up to our times, in obedience to the Spirit of the Lord. The Apostle reminds us that in prayer "we know not what we should pray for … the Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness, with groans beyond all utterance, he allows us to turn to God and call him: Father " (see Rom 8,26). It is above all in the liturgy that his work is clearly perceivable, because there he sanctifies the entire Christian community and each individual believer. The Eucharist, especially, permits us to see the realization of the Spirit’s work. It is in a sense the synthesis of all sacramental life because Christ is really present. The epiclesis, the invocation of the offerings, is confirmed as the focal center in which the Spirit’s work is acknowledged: "Send your Spirit to sanctify the gifts we offer you ", remaining the culminating expression for seeing the mission of the Holy Spirit realized. Without him, the bread and the wine would remain such, just as the Baptismal water or the chrism of confirmation and the oils for unction would remain unchanged; if the Spirit is not present, there is no transformation in the pact of love between a bride and groom nor in that man laying on the floor waiting for the imposition of the hands for priesthood; if he is not invoked, no sin may be forgiven to he who asks for forgiveness. The greatness of the Holy Spirit, in all liturgical actions, is manifest in the obedience that he attributes to the words of the minister who invokes him to come and transform the matter of the sacrament. In a certain sense it is almost possible to see a "kenosi" of the Spirit (H. U. von Balthasar), not only because he obeys the words of the minister, but also even more so because he makes himself visible in his Church also as an Institution.

Theological life is the work of the Spirit. He works where there is faith, hope and love, permitting the slow but progressive accomplishment of moving towards a full identification of the face that must receive our obedience in faith, the certitude of hope, and the passion of love. It is with reason that Saint Thomas could state that "omne verum a quocumque dicatur a Spiritu Sancto est" (St. Th, II, 109, 1 ad 1). The seeds of the Logos are planted in each act of His Spirit; the maturity needed, that requires awaiting for the Spirit’s measure of time, oblige patience and respect, without setting out on paths that might manifest a pious human desire but not necessarily the propulsive thrust of the Spirit. This subject, which introduces inter-religious dialogue in a particular manner, permits us to emphasize the commitment that a theologian is obliged to assume as an ecclesial subject. The Spirit that "breaths where it wishes" is the freshness of a Bride’s eternal youth, who is called upon always and everywhere, to follow the paths of the Spirit. He indicates the lands and the rhythm of time: it is to him that we must look, and it is him we must listen to so that we may still remain the representatives of a hope that has never abandoned us.

"Sine tuo numine nihil est in homine, nihil est innoxium". This vision of the faith, far from rendering the acts of the believer passive ones, opens the path to free obedience that knows how to transform Christian obedience into the most genuine fruit of an existence lived with enthusiasm, hence moved by the Spirit which gives life.

X Rino Fisichella