Vigils Reading

THE HOLY SPIRIT BESTOWS

THE UNDERSTANDING OF FAITH

From a treatise by William of St Thierry4

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If your whole being hesitates before the all too profound mysteries

of faith, say without fear, not in disagreement but out of a desire to obey,

“How can this be?” Let your question be a prayer, let it be love, devotion,

humble desire. Do not let it look haughtily at the divine majesty, but seek

for salvation in the means of salvation which the God of our deliverance

provides. Then the Angel of great Counsel will answer you: “When the

Counsellor comes whom I shall send to you from the Father, …he will

bear witness to me and will teach you all things: all truth will come to you

from the Spirit of truth.” “Who, for example, knows one’s own innermost

self but one’s own spirit within him? Similarly, no one knows what lies at

the depths of God but the Spirit of God.”

Hasten, then, to come into communion with the Holy Spirit: and he

is invoked only when he is present. When called upon, he comes; he

arrives in the abundance of divine blessings. It is he who is the swift-

flowing river which makes glad the city of God. At his coming, if he finds

you humble and free from anxiety, reflecting on the word of God, he will

rest upon you and reveal to you what God hides from the wise and prudent

of this world. You will then be enlightened by all the things which

Wisdom, when on earth, could have said to the disciples, but which they

could not bear before the coming of the Spirit of truth who would lead

them into all truth.

To receive and learn this truth, it is useless to expect from the mouth

of another human person what one was not able to receive or learn from

the lips of the Truth himself. For as this Truth declared, “God is Spirit”;

and just as those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth,

so those who desire to know him must seek only in the Holy Spirit to

understand faith and the meaning of this pure and unalloyed truth.

In the darkness and ignorance of this life the Holy Spirit is himself,

for the poor in spirit, the light which lightens, the love which attracts, the

gentleness which charms, the love of one who loves, the piety of one who

gives himself without reserve. It is he who from one conviction to another,

reveals the justice of God to those who believe; he gives grace for grace

and enlightenment for the faith which “comes from hearing.

4 THE MIRROR OF FAITH; PL 180, 384-D.9