Each of the three Divine Persons is holy, and each is a
spirit, and we give the name “Holy Spirit” to the Third Person precisely
because He is all that the Father and the Son have
common -their divinity,
their charity, their blessedness, their delight in each other, their holiness
and their spiritual nature. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father and the
Son, proceeding from both, and He is the unity and charity of them both. The
Holy Spirit is so completely, so truly, God’s gift that unless someone has the
Holy Spirit, he has none of God’s gift, and whoever has any of them, has them
only in the Holy Spirit. Many things are given to us through the Holy Spirit,
but they are valueless if the chief gift of charity is lacking. And the reason
why the Holy Spirit is called “Gift of God” is because “the charity of God is
poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us.”
Nothing is more excellent than this gift, which ultimately
differentiates between the children of the kingdom and the children of
darkness. Even if all the other gifts are lacking, charity will take us to the
kingdom of God. Although faith can exist without charity, only the faith that
works through love can have any value. The Holy Spirit is the charity of the
Father and the Son, by means of which they love each other. He is the unity in
virtue of which they are one. When he is given to us, he enkindles in our
hearts the love of God and of one another. This same love, living in our
hearts, is the love by which God is love.
This is “the Spirit of the Lord which fills the whole world”
with his all-powerful goodness, appointing a perfect harmony among all
creatures, and filling them all with the vast riches of his grace, according to
the capacity of each. It is he who teaches us to pray as we ought, making us
cleave to God, rendering us pleasing to God and not unworthy to have our
prayers answered. He enlightens our minds and forms love in our hearts. All
this is the work of the Holy Spirit. We may even call it his own special work,
if we remember that he is sufficient for this task only because he can never be
separated from the Father and the Son.
William of Saint Thierry