LESSON ONE

Who Is the Holy Spirit?

Come, Holy Spirit, elusive, powerful Wind,
Breath of life, closer to me than I am to myself:
show Yourself, yet in a way that reminds me
that You have always been there, and will always be.
So take possession of me; I wait eagerly to learn. Amen.

In the very beginning, we need to think through the logic of the question: Who is the Holy Spirit? Many might ask: "What is the Holy Spirit?"—as if it is some thing, some experience, something you could measure or get your hands on. The Spirit is personal, closer to you than you are to yourself. Grammatically, the Hebrew word ruach is feminine, and it means "breath" or "wind." The Spirit is personal, very personal, as personal as your next breath, and yet as elusive as the wind, as invisible as the wind, yet with powerful, noticeable effects.

The very question "Who is the Holy Spirit?" implies another answer: I am not! The Holy Spirit is not me and my spiritual self. I may have had profound, wonderful feelings about God; but the Holy Spirit is far larger than my feelings. I may have had a moving experience authored by the Spirit, but the Holy Spirit is far beyond my experience. The Holy Spirit may (and will!) be the catalyst for startling changes in my life. The Holy Spirit may and will nurture a whole new set of attitudes, will be the spark to ignite an unforeseen passion for God. The Holy Spirit will stir my heart to obey God, to be holy, to be assured of God's unfailing presence. The Holy Spirit will lift me out of my petty life into a heightened consciousness, a delightful intimacy with God that may tempt me to blush, that issues in a sigh.

But the Holy Spirit is not the same as the passion you feel, is not the knee-buckling intimacy. The Holy Spirit is not anything you "have." For the Spirit is too big, too marvelous, too treacherous, to be boxed inside me or you or even the most spiritual person on this planet. The Spirit radically changes my life, precisely because the Spirit is something I can never possess. The Spirit isn't "in" me so much as the Spirit is way ahead of me, behind me, around me, inspiring me and you and the next person, and the space between us. Indeed, the Spirit isn't "in" me because the Spirit is moving all over the universe, creating beauty and light and goodness and love.

This personal, elusive, invisible, powerful Spirit is not something God hurls down from on high. The Spirit isn't a neatly wrapped little package God gives to you, or to me, or to some select group of people. The Spirit ranges widely, showing up everywhere, or the Spirit is nowhere at all—because, again, the Spirit isn't a thing located here and not there. The Spirit isn't something you grab hold of—because the Spirit is God.

Talking to the woman at the well in Samaria on the subject of what satisfies our thirst, Jesus said, "God is Spirit" (John 4:24). Who is the Holy Spirit? The Spirit is God, and God is love.

LESSON TWO

The Spirit Is Love

Come, Holy Spirit, bearing Your best gift,
Yourself; for there is nothing else I need or desire.
You loved me though I was unaware, so now I ask
You to surprise me once more with that Kiss
that tenderly brushes away all loneliness. Amen.

The Spirit is God, and God is love. When 1 John 4:8 declares that "God is love," we need not infer that everything that pretends to be "love" in our world is somehow divine. "Love" is corrupted, demeaned, cheapened all the time—but our very awareness of this, our intuition that there must be such a thing as genuine, true, eternally unfailing love is a hint about the existence of love, our craving for love, our need to love.

It is no mere coincidence that the first "fruit of the Spirit" is love (Galatians 5:22). But before we get cozy and thank the Spirit for giving us love, or making love happen, we need to refocus our hearts and turn our admiring gaze toward the Holy Spirit, and let ourselves be moved to adoration of this Holy Spirit who quite simply is love, long before love is given or received or even noticed. God the Holy Spirit is love, has always been love, will always be love.

St. Augustine's words move me: "'The gift of the Holy Spirit' is no more than 'the Holy Spirit.'" Before I plunge into thinking about the benefits of the Holy Spirit, before I weigh the effects of the Holy Spirit in my life or the world, I can be still and revel in the one and only gift of the Holy Spirit that matters, and that is the Holy Spirit itself, herself, himself. Love is like that. When you love someone, you may wrap up a gift and place it under the tree, or you may send flowers, or spend thousands on a diamond ring. But these are mere trinkets, losable, dispensable really. The real gift you give, the only gift you are able to give, is your self.

God the Holy Spirit is like that, loving us, giving us not this or that, but something of immeasurably wonderful value—the Spirit's own self. This kind of love spells the destruction of loneliness. The Holy Spirit's great delight, her consuming passion, his reason to get up in the morning, is to overcome isolation, isolation between me and God, between you and God, between you and me.

Bernard of Clairvaux provocatively suggested that it is appropriate to think of the Holy Spirit as a kiss. He is imagining God the Father loving his son Jesus so tenderly that God would kiss his son, and the Spirit then would be that kiss!—which leads us to consider the Trinity.

LESSON THREE

The Spirit in the Trinity

Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove,
inviting us into the love of Jesus and his Father:
Take my hand and pull me into the glorious dance,
the largesse of fellowship that cannot be contained
but must be shared. I want to dance in Your circle. Amen.

Saint Augustine taught that the Holy Spirit is the bond of love between Father and Son. The whole notion of the Trinity (God as three in one: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but still just one God) may befuddle us. But the Trinity is not a mathematical riddle to test our faith. The Trinity is a mystery, but this does not mean the Trinity is irrational. The earliest Christians tried to name their experience of God and to...