The Trinity and the Holy Spirit

This Sunday is Trinity Sunday – so for the next few days let’s meditate on the Trinity and the way the Holy Spirit, Mary and the Church act as a mother toward us to form Jesus in us. God the Father sends the Son into the world to give his life to us. The mission of the Holy Spirit is to receive the Son, first in Mary, then in us. This mission of the Spirit has three characteristics. It is receptive and feminine; maternal and virginal. Listen to how the Bible describes the mission of the Holy Spirit. Wisdom 7:7 And so I prayed, and understanding was given me; I entreated, and the spirit of Wisdom came to me. I esteemed her more than scepters and thrones; compared with her, I held riches as nothing. I reckoned no priceless stone to be her peer, for compared with her, all gold is a pinch of sand, and beside her silver ranks as mud. I loved her more than health or beauty, preferred her to the light, since her radiance never sleeps. In her company, all good things came to me, at her hands riches not to be numbered. All these I delighted in, since Wisdom brings them, but as yet I did not know she was their mother.

Sirach 15:2 Whoever fears the Lord…will obtain wisdom. She will come to meet him like a mother, and receive him like a virgin bride.

The Holy Spirit or Wisdom is described with distinctively feminine, maternal and virginal characteristics.  

God is neither man nor woman. However, we can attribute specific characteristics to the mission of the Son who became man in Jesus and to the mission of the Spirit. And the Holy Spirit carries out a distinctively maternal mission toward us.

In fact, we shall see tomorrow that Mary is able to be the Mother of the Church and our spiritual mother because of the maternal power of the Holy Spirit.