Living Icons of Jesus through The Holy Spirit

During these days of prayer for a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon our world and our lives, the Liturgy presents us, once again, with the beautiful reading of St. Basil the Great on the Holy Spirit.
I have commented before (here) some parts of this text but it is well worth reading and re-reading it. This is a great hymn and a consoling prayer that can give us theme for a quiet, contemplative time in the secret of our inner room.
I'm copying the text from the Liturgy of the Hours:

   

The Work of the Holy Spirit

The titles given to the Holy Spirit must surely stir the soul of anyone who hears them, and make him realise that they speak of nothing less than the supreme Being.

Is he not called:

            the Spirit of God,

               the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father,

                  the steadfast Spirit,

                     the guiding Spirit?

But his principal and most personal title is the Holy Spirit.

To the Spirit all creatures turn in their need for sanctification;

all living things seek him according to their ability.

His breath empowers each to achieve its own natural end.

The Spirit is the source of holiness, a spiritual light, and he offers his own light to every mind to help it in its search for truth.

By nature the Spirit is beyond the reach of our mind, but we can know him by his goodness.

The power of the Spirit fills the whole universe, but he gives himself only to those who are worthy, acting in each according to the measure of his faith.

Simple in himself, the Spirit is manifold in his mighty works.

The whole of his being is present to each individual; the whole of his being is present everywhere.

Though shared in by many, he remains unchanged; his self giving is no loss to himself.

Like the sunshine, which permeates all the atmosphere, spreading over land and sea, and yet is enjoyed by each person as though it were for him alone, so the Spirit pours forth his grace in full measure, sufficient for all, and yet is present as though exclusively to everyone who can receive him.

To all creatures that share in him he gives a delight limited only by their own nature, not by his ability to give.

The Spirit raises our hearts to heaven, guides the steps of the weak, and brings to perfection those who are making progress.

He enlightens those who have been cleansed from every stain of sin and makes them spiritual by communion with himself.

As clear, transparent substances become very bright when sunlight falls on them and shine with a new radiance, so also souls in whom the Spirit shines become spiritual themselves and a source of grace for others.

From the Spirit comes

     foreknowledge of the future,

       understanding of the mysteries of faith,

         insight into the hidden meaning of Scripture,

           and other special gifts.

Through the Spirit we become citizens of heaven, we enter into eternal happiness, and abide in God.

Through the Spirit we acquire a likeness to God; indeed, we attain what is beyond our most sublime aspirations – we become God.

From the treatise On the Holy Spirit by Saint Basil the Great, bishop

The last paragraph makes a very bold statement on our destiny and our identity as human beings. We are created with the image and likeness of God in us (Gen 1:26) like a seed that we need to nurture and allow to grow over time in order to bring it to fruition. 

In Jesus the Christ we have the perfectly accomplished human image of God. Jesus the Way, the Truth, and the Life is One with God, and like Him, we too are called not only to union but to oneness with God through identification and participation in Christ.

Thus our earthly journey is about becoming like Christ, becoming Christ. We are presented in the Gospels with the Model we need to imitate in our lives with our free decision to follow Him every day. But our actions, our efforts are not enough to make us like Him. For this to happen a real transformation has to take place. We call it holiness, which is a divinization not only of our actions but also of our faculties, of our mind and our psyche, of our feelings and desires. 

Jesus fulfills his promise not to leave us orphans (Jn 14:18) by becoming, through the workings of His Spirit, the yeast of our transformation that sculpts in us his own likeness and makes of us his Living Memories, his Living Icons when and where we surrender and entrust the whole of our being to the Divine Artist who is recreating in us the human face of God.

Come Spirit of Jesus!

The Work of the Holy Spirit

As we pray for the coming of the Spirit during this time of expectation, the Liturgy of the Hours sets for us the tone. The Office of Readings in particular offers us some pearls of our faith in the words of the Fathers of the Church.


We read from the treatise On the Holy Spirit by Saint Basil the Great: "The Spirit is the source of holiness, a spiritual light, ... The power of the Spirit fills the whole universe ... Simple in himself [or herself], the Spirit is manifold in his mighty works. The whole of his being is present to each individual; the whole of his being is present everywhere ... Like the sunshine, which permeates all the atmosphere, spreading over land and sea, and yet is enjoyed by each person as though it were for him alone, so the Spirit pours forth his grace in full measure, sufficient for all, and yet is present as though exclusively to everyone who can receive him. To all creatures that share in him he gives a delight limited only by their own nature, not by his ability to give. 
The Spirit raises our hearts to heaven, guides the steps of the weak, and brings to perfection those who are making progress."


The Spirit of God is God's very self in action, always "at work" for us, with us, in us. Always available, always present, always inviting, always seducing, and always unique in expression to each person, granting Gifts for the good of all. We call them charisms:
"From the Spirit comes foreknowledge of the future, understanding of the mysteries of faith, insight into the hidden meaning of Scripture, and other special gifts."


These individual expressions of the Spirit in everyone of us are meant to help us in our journey. But what is the direction, the goal of that movement? Where are we going that we need the Spirit? What is it all about? What is the ultimate seduction of the Spirit? 


St. Basil concludes: "Through the Spirit we acquire a likeness to God; indeed, we attain what is beyond our most sublime aspirations -we become God."


We don't hear this kind of expression in our Sunday homilies and yet this "theosis" or "deification", our transformation through the journey of life, was clearly expressed by the  contemplative theologians, the Fathers and Mothers of the early Church. They wrote from their own experience, which means that this is not just the talk on "the other side" of eternity, this is about here and now, our journey on planet Earth, today.


St. Paul had already experienced and written about this: "Life, to me, is Christ" (Phil 1,21).  "It is no longer I who lives but Christ lives in me" (Ga 2,20)


M. Maria Celeste Crostarosa, a Neapolitan mystic of the XVIII century and the instrument of God for the foundation of the religious Institute of the Most Holy Redeemer with St. Alphonsus Liguori -Redemptorist missionaries and Redemptoristine nuns- writes extensively and repeatedly about the transformation of the human person into Christ, this divinization. 
In her Degrees of Prayer  (12th Degree) she describes the transformation of the person in the spiritual journey as a new creation, and makes a parallel with the Creation passage in Genesis. When she comes to the Seventh Day she writes:


"Adam being created, he relaxed and slept. That's when the Lord rested also -on the seventh day. Created-man found rest in the Divinity and the Divinity found it in Adam. Having created man for His own rest and dwelling-place, He delighted in the original model, His Son, and rested. Our soul has God for its delight and rest when she is created all over again in her original innocence.
After all these works of creation are made all over again the soul is given the likeness of the Son of God. She is given an original innocence and divine simplicity -just as man was made in the beginning. Then God rests in the soul and she sleeps and rests in God's delight."


After two more pages describing this condition of the person, M. Maria Celeste continues:
"Here it is fulfilled at last the longing man had when, in the earthly Paradise, the hellish serpent persuaded him to eat the fruit from the tree forbidden by the Lord. [The serpent said that] By eating it he would become like God. 
Just what he longed for has happened. The Lord wanted this longing of man to be fulfilled but, for man's happiness, in a different way from what the enemy had suggested.
That tree of Paradise, forbidden to Adam, was a figure of the Word of God made man, and whoever dared eating from it would die. That is, for those who eat it and die it was indicating the Jews because they would eat His flesh through envy and kill Him. 
But this fruit of life, through His death, should enliven us with eternal life. It should also become for all the chosen souls the fruit and food of life in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar, where -in a real, true, and admirable way- when we ate from it, we would be transformed into the living God. 


This is the work "par excellence" of the Holy Spirit, our transformation into Christ already on this side of eternity. This is the contemplative journey. This is our destiny. 
Our daily life becomes the womb of transformation when we invite and follow the lead of the Spirit as modeled for us by so many brothers and sisters who, through the centuries, have become living memories of Christ on earth.