- The Holy Spirit unites us with God and others in Love
RC, perhaps you have heard in St. Paul’s writings how he distinguishes the “old man” from the “new man?” Who or what is the new man in us?
As I shared in another post, I believe the new man is the person we become when we are born again in Christ Jesus through Baptism.
The Saints have boldly said, “we become like Christ” or we come to share in His “likeness.” The truth is that by grace the person of Christ actually becomes one with us.
According to St John He ‘indwells’ the soul advanced in Grace (Jn 14:23).
St. Paul is often called “The Apostle of Faith” but to me his theology centers even more upon the indwelling of Christ in the Christian soul.
St. Paul writes to the Galatians that God “was pleased to reveal his Son in me” (1:16).
He little further he writes, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me“ (2:20). At the heart of St. Paul’s theology is the work of the Holy Spirit to reveal Christ within us !
A corollary to this is that it is Christ indwelling in me and in my neighbor that makes us one in the Holy Spirit.
St. Paul will say that in Christ there is neither male nor female, we are all one in Christ. Theologically we understand this unity as the “Mystical body” of Christ.
We are all united to our one Head, Christ.
As the Holy Trinity is one God in three Persons, so in our unity with Christ we together participate in the oneness of Christ’s divine nature.
In this life we share in His nature by Grace, we cannot see it now, but in heaven God will “be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28).
A semblance of this occurs on the natural level.
Being spiritual persons, we human beings have the capacity to unite and share ourselves with one another through love.
Love unites! And it is in our human nature to love and be loved by another.
Just as God is three persons united in love, so God gave each of us a heart or created spirit that is in the image of His Divine Spirit.
Spiritually we join with others in our hearts through love.
Of course, we are sinners and we do this imperfectly.
Nevertheless, through the Grace of the Holy Spirit, our love is elevated in God and we become united to God in love through Christ.
All of this is to show that without achieving loving, personal relationships with one another, even on the natural level, we will never achieve the fullness of the personhood that God intended for us. Nor have we truly entered into the fullness of life.
To share in a union of love with God by Grace is, of course, to share in His own eternal life… to be fully alive!
The nature of a spirit is to unite in love with another spirit
Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger), in his article (Concerning the notion of person in theology), taught that a spirit is by its nature capable of transcending itself and uniting with another spirit… whether this be with God or with another human being.
A spirit, in his thought, transcends itself to become one with another spirit.
In this union, Cardinal Ratzinger writes, a spirit reflects the other in itself.
In other words, our soul as a spirit knows itself more fully when it is in relationship with another soul-spirit. It is in this sense that the Holy Spirit reveals the face of Christ in our souls.I believe this is what Scripture refers to when it states that in marriage the two “become one flesh.“ Each reflects the other within themselves in their mutual love.
Martin Buber wrote that “all real living is meeting” ( I and Thou). This is to say that we achieve the fullness of our personhood through spiritual, loving, relationships with God and one another. And this is the mission of the Holy Spirit: to unite us all in Christ.
The Holy Spirit indwells souls in a state of Grace, and He reveals Christ within them.
In this sense, the knowledge and love of Christ is also a new knowledge of others and self-knowledge of being ‘one with Christ.’
This is what Jesus meant when He said that He will reveal Himself to those who love and obey Him (Jn 14:21).
This knowledge, this truth about myself and others of being “in Christ” is our new baptismal identity.
It is truly our real self, the “new man” of St. Paul.
With St. Paul, the soul can proclaim, “it is not I that live but Christ who lives in me” and, as well, in my brother and sister.
Just as two flames of fire move to unite together and become a single flame, so with
the indwelling of the Holy Spirit our souls share in the unity of the Spirit’s divine loving
and knowing.
It is Christ revealing Himself as the “new man” in each of us.
In so doing this “new man,” Christ, acts through our souls. As the psalmist writes, “love and truth walk in your presence” (ps 89:16). This is to say that when we individually live in the “presence” of Christ indwelling our hearts, then our minds are illuminated by His truth and our hearts are united to Him in His love.
The mystery in all this is that while we ourselves are acting to love, pray, adore… it is nevertheless Christ acting through us for the Glory of our Father.
So as we give ourselves to one another in love and in truth we transcend our personal “self-centeredness” and become one with one another in Christ.
This union of love mutually edifies both persons.
This is to say that in loving another I grow to share myself, my giftedness, with the other.
Is this not a fulfillment of Christ’s command “to love others as we love ourselves and desire good things for them?”
There is a corollary to Christ’s commandment to love our neighbor.
It is that if I have never learned to love myself and to respect myself in truth, then I can never truly love or respect another.
Ironically, I come to love and know myself by first being loved by another.
This first love, that of being loved uniquely as I am and not because of what I do, first begins in the family, which has been rightly called the first church!
So we are most conformed to the “New Man” and one another, who is Christ living in us, when we know and love one another.
In this sense, our spiritual sharing is also His gifting us.
Allow me to explain with one final point.
As I suggested above, love brings about a sharing in one another’s spiritual gifts and attributes. This is evident in the members of a family who share in the spiritual gifts of their parents, such as charity, wisdom, and self-sacrifice…
This is also seen in members of a religious order who share in the charism of their founder.
These gifts and charisms find new and revealing expressions in their members so they become a new ‘gift’ of God to the world.
And is this not a fulfillment of God’s promise given to us through Moses, “I will bless down to a thousand generations the children of those who love me” (Ex 20:6)?
God’s ‘blessing’ gifts us with a greater fullness of personhood and family, and this through the Spirit of love.
In this gift, that of love, we are not only one in heart with another, but we all share in each one’s personal giftedness.
We see this in the lives of the saints.
Mystical saints speak of the work of the Holy Spirit as between two persons who are both ‘beloved’ of one another.
In this union of love, the beloved becomes conformed to the lover and the lover to the beloved.
They even speak of the lover possessing the beloved as the beloved possessing the lover.
In fact, the highest level of spiritual life is a mystical marriage or the mutual possession of Christ and the soul. And the Book of Revelation describes the celebration of the union of Christ with His Body, the Church, as a wedding banquet!
In loving and possessing Christ and being loved and possessed by Him, the soul is conformed to His image and likeness, and shares in his divine attributes and virtues.
Of course, this is without ever diminishing His divine nature or us becoming God.
In conclusion, these truths help us to better understand the Father’s ultimate plan for baptizing us ‘in Christ.’
Just as God is a unity of Father and Son in the Love of the Holy Spirit, so does the Spirit create us anew “ in Christ” to share in God’s Trinitarian Life of unity and love.
That life begins now in the Church of Christ and will come to its plenitude in heaven.