HOLY SPIRIT: THE FORGOTTEN PERSON

Among the persons of the Blessed Trinity, the third person is known as the forgotten person. Why is this so? It is because people seldom express the Holy Spirit, the third person, in words or writings. Most of our prayers are directed towards the Father or the Son. Seldom do we direct our prayers to the Holy Spirit.

Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle said, “Catholics are rather weak in pneumatology. Unlike the Eastern Churches, we seldom find a school of theology with a full tract on the mysteries of the Holy Spirit. Catholics frequently feel the need to “experience” the Holy Spirit only during exams, in Mass of the Holy Spirit to open the school year, in extreme cases of need, but not in our day-to-day life.”[1] This is true nowadays. Theological schools have fewer courses regarding the Holy Spirit. People have only thought of the Holy Spirit in certain instances as above mentioned.

Is the Holy Spirit then important? The answer is YES! If we will base it on the Sacred Scripture, it spoke a lot about the working of the Holy Spirit. Some of which are found in John 14: 15-17, John 14: 25-26, John 15: 26-27, John 16: 7-11 and John 16: 12-14. The question that we need to ask is how then can we translate such importance of the Holy Spirit in our lives?

First, we need to be generous. Generosity is not only about giving something. Generosity is recognition of one’s resources coming from above. When we become generous we recognize that all that we have comes from God. It is the working of the Holy Spirit that allowed us to act and give. Many times we have forgotten the reality that it was the Holy Spirit working in us. We become proud and lose the sense of dependability with the Holy Spirit. We need to recall what happen in the upper room with the apostles. They were filled with the Holy Spirit. It was then that they were strengthen and generous enough to lay down one’s life.

Second, we need to be humble. Since all we have and give comes not only from our own effort but also with the help of the Holy Spirit. We need to remain a child. We need to be humble for all that we have comes form God. We cannot brag anything except that the Holy Spirit is working in us. Humility is a step closer towards exaltation of the Holy Spirit in our life.

Lastly, we need to have silence in our hearts. Silence is not just abstaining from talking. Silence in this sense means contemplation of everything that we have done. In today’s world were every minute is being wasted; most of us have forgotten the presence of the Holy Spirit. We only recognize it when we are in need. Silence allows us to internalize to check the reality. Without the Holy Spirit, we will not be able to move. Without the Holy Spirit, all that we have and are will be nothing.

It is noteworthy to end this with what the Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, Orthodox Bishop Ignatius IV (Hazim) of Lattakia, wrote:

Without the Spirit,

        God is distant

        Christ is in the past

        And the Gospel is a dead letter.

Without the Spirit,

        The Church is no more than an organization,

        Authority is domination,

        Our mission is propaganda,

        Worship is recalling to mind,

         And Christian action is a slave morality.

[1] Luis Antonio G. Tagle, An Easter People: Our Christian Vocation to be Messengers of Hope (Quezon City: Jesuit Communications Foundations, Inc., 2003), 83.