177- The Five Modes of Activity of the Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit is the New living Law, alive and acting in us and through us. As Christians our true Moses is Jesus himself, and our two tables of the Ten Commandments is the Living Divine Spirit in us, communicating Divine Life to us and guiding us 24/7. We are not dealing with a set of rules, or commandments, but with a living Spirit. This is why it is of the utmost importance to make every effort during this lifetime to learn to know who the Holy Spirit is, how He works, and to learn how to correspond in the best way to his Action in us. All Christians, individually and as a whole, need to be experts in the Holy Spirit. This is the most essential and vital science in which each human being needs to gain knowledge and expertise.

The Holy Spirit is our inner Master, the Master of all our being, senses, emotions, mind, and spirit. It is in the secret of our heart that God pours His Spirit into us. However, He first needs to purify our heart, transform it from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh (see Ezekiel 36). And after this his desire is to dwell in our Heart of flesh with His Spirit, being united to us and guiding us.

God gives us: the Holy Spirit himself, the uncreated third person of the Trinity, uncreated. He gives to our soul his seven gifts to illumine us, guide us, help us discern and give us the piety and strength to do His Will. He gives us support and help for our body. Despite this, the key aspect of the Holy Spirit that is given to us remains the Seven Gifts, because it is through them that our conscious soul can – by the Grace of God – listen, accept and correspond to the grace of God (the Holy Spirit's seven gifts). 

Therefore, it is very traditional and rather common to speak about the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit given to the human soul, to help the mind through Wisdom, Knowledge, Understanding, Counsel, and the will through Piety, Fortitude, Fear of God. Different images can be used to help us understand the relationship between the seven spirits or Gifts of the Holy Spirit and our Faculties.

The Ship with Seven Masts

Our main faculties – mind and will – are like the seven masts of a ship that need to be filled by the winds in order to function correctly and move, i.e. sail in spiritual life. Our mind has four different ways of functioning and our will three, hence the need for the seven gifts. When the sails are deployed, the capacity to respond or catch the winds increases.

This is why the seven gifts (or capacities to catch the sevenfold Spirit) need to grow in us.

The Seven Branched Lamp-stand

Another image that helps us understand the relationship between the Holy Spirit and our faculties is the lamp-stand, or Menorah, we find in the Jerusalem Temple, and in the book of Revelation.

Each human being is like a lampstand having seven branches, each one capable of holding one lamp: oil and wick. If there is enough oil and a good wick, then the Fire of the sevenfold Holy Spirit can light up each one of them.

The Modus Operandiof the Seven Gifts

We can develop the teaching on the Seven Gifts, gift by gift, but this is not the purpose of this short article. Here, we would like to deepen our understanding of the way the Gifts of the Holy Spirit operate in us.

First of all, it is not enough to mention the Gift, any gift or each gift, explain it and ask for it, and then implement in it in our life. The gifts are not implemented in one particular way, or uniquely. What we need to understand is the relationship between the modus operandiof each gift and our stage of growth. We can clearly distinguish at least five modus operandiof the gifts in us:

	Spiritual Development		Modus Operandi
1-	Committed Christian		General Help of the Grace of God: strengthening the moral structure of the human being: fulfilling the 10 Commandments.
Second Conversion
2-	Purification of the	- sense	Human Mode of Action
		- emotions
		- mind
Deep Purification (Dark Night of the Spirit), Transition
3-	Spiritual Engagement – Betrothal (united with Jesus' Head)		Divine Mode of Action
4-	Transformative Union		Incandescent Mode – Directly Active
5-	United with Jesus' Body		Redemptive Mode – directly influencing our brothers and sisters Having a share in their darkness

The Gifts of the Holy Spirit do not work uniformly. The purity and degree of transformation in God determine the mode in which the activity of the Holy Spirit is deployed.

Strangely enough, if on one hand we tend to distinguish the existence of seven different Gifts of the Holy Spirit, cannot comprehend the order they have between themselves, the relationship between this order and the anthropology, and finally, we don't have the faintest idea of the existence of variations in the action of the seven gifts in us, according to our spiritual growth. St John of the Cross, however, states it succinctly with this fundamental principle in Spiritual Life namely, the Holy Spirit's way of acting in us depends on the main need we have at the stage we have reached.

In conclusion, then, not being able to differentiate the different modus operandiof the Holy Spirit is quite a failure in our understanding of Spiritual Life.

Often Christians navigate between 1 and 2, thinking that 2 is being spiritual and being under the influence of the Holy Spirit, not guessing at all that the first spiritual way of acting of the Holy Spirit belongs to a "human mode", because God adapts Himself to the baser way of acting of the Old Man in us. Hence this is why St Paul speaks about existing on "milk" and not "solid food".

In consequence, to date with regard to spiritual literature, in spiritual literature on the Holy Spirit we often hear more about the Charisms of the Holy Spirit rather than the seven gifts! And if we hear about the seven gifts we never hear about their mode of operation.

Really, St John of the Cross should be taught to the entire world when studying basic Theology.

It becomes worse, of course, when we use some lateral criteria of discernment, taken out of context, to discern unilaterally about the action of the Holy Spirit in the human being, weighing up His action by "consolation" and "desolation" i.e. feeling and not feeling His action in us. This is really the end of any possible spiritual life, of any proper discernment! People should really read St John of the Cross closely. It is from this point of lack of proper analysis and understanding of what is happening, namely, moving from the human to the divine mode of action of the Holy Spirit, that St John of the Cross starts to write!

More often we deserve what St Paul said: "Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready."(1 Cor 3:1-2) A good way of getting ready is by raising awareness of the issue, in order to move the faithful to seek greater depths in their spiritual life and not to be content with little, thinking we have achieved a great deal.

The most common case that can arise, however, is that the most generous-hearted of the Faithful will be blessed by reaching the second mode (2a, 2b, 2c) and will think that this is the most they can reach and will start to go around in circles, or worse, to go backward.

What Do We Mean by "Mode"

As we can see, "mode" is a key word in this article, or any of the synonyms for it: one can use a synonym of it: modality, way, manner.

“Mode” implies the different aspects and parameters of the Action of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in and through the faculties of the human being, mainly mind and will. It implies these different aspects being all interconnected with one another:

- the Height of the action (in God or outside of God)

- the Intensity of the action

- the Speed of the action

- the Purity: if the person is still in the three stages of purification, the main work of the Holy Spirit is to achieve the purification, stage after stage.

- the Means used: created means or uncreated means, i.e. God himself.

- the Goal of the act: the goal is to bring the person to the next step, to reach a greater mode. Reaching the fifth mode, the goal is to take a share in the salvation of our brothers and sisters.

Conclusion

In order to conclude, I would like to reiterate the main point we have been addressing in this article. If we talk about the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, we need to remember that they don't always act in us in the same way. Each stage of our growth and transformation in God implies a different modality in the work of the Holy Spirit. In fact, He adapts himself to the immediate need of the person in matters of purification, transformation and growth.

Furthermore, the different modes of action of the Holy Spirit should be studied and taken into consideration in all the activities of the Church. This aspect is altogether fundamental and necessary, and it should not be taken for granted that just because it has rarely been studied and used that we have the right to neglect it. In fact, one should simply have recourse to the undisputed master in these matters – St John of the Cross – to see the truth.

176- Four Ways of Believing the Church

What should be done when an eminent member of the Church does something that scandalises us? The Creed tells us that the Church is not an optional matter in our life, namely we say: "we believe the Church, One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic". Paradoxically, however, she can become an obstacle to our faith and growth instead of helping us mature.

Scandal can become a learning curve for us. The outcome depends on our response. Generally, with or without a scandal, we are called to believe the Church when the Church speaks in the name of Jesus. A sin is a sin. A grave sin is a grave sin! This is true. Nobody will ever question this aspect. St Paul himself teaches us that God puts his grace in vessels of clay to help us focus on His Grace and not on the clay vessel. In this sense our Act of Faith in the Church, the manner in which we believe the Church and in what the Church says, has to rely on the Holy Spirit and not on the flesh*.

The Act of Faith has two components: fides qua creditur (the attitude of faith, our manner when making an Act of Faith) and fides quae creditur (the object we believe in).  In other words, in the Act of Faith we have: the subject of the Act (me, the manner and means I use to make the Act of Faith: the manner can be human or divine) and the object of the Act (the contents I believe in).

The Church, seen as the object of our Act of Faith, is not God, but she bears the fullness of God and is meant to lead us to God. This is God's will. She is part of our Creed. She is Jesus' Sacrament, she is the Sacrament of Salvation offered by Jesus to us to communicate Divine Life to us.

As a consequence, when we face the Church we don’t have only one manner of making our Act of Faith but four: 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b (see table). Three are wrong and don't lead to God and His Salvation.

		The object of the Act of Faith: i.e. looking at the Church we focus on:
		1- The Clay Vessel	2- The Grace of God
The man-ner we use to  make our act of faith	a-Leaning on the "Flesh"*	I look no further than at the sins of my brothers and sisters, members of the Church: what gets splashed back in my face is: sins.	I am focusing on the Grace of God in the Church, but I am still using my own limited understanding of these sins. I do not access the grace of God properly.
	b-Leaning on the "Spirit"	I am making a proper act of faith but I am still focusing on human beings and I am leaning on them. I am living in false hope.	I am focusing on the grace of God in the Church and I am doing it with faith and am therefore entering into her more deeply, seeing the Saints and the Doctors and going even deeper to her heart: Mary the perfect realisation of it. I am using Her Faith in order to reach the Grace of God and to dwell in it.

We need to learn to discern the one and only correct manner in which to believe (2b, in white) and learn to make the Act of Faith properly in order to succeed in receiving the Grace of God and to grow spiritually.

We are supposed to grow in the Church, like going from one Mansion in the Church to the next, always going deeper until we reach the deepest Mansion, the burning Heart of the Church. The Church in fact is also a path, a way to reach the fullness of Jesus himself. We are tempted to stop at each mansion and stay there thinking that this is it, while the Holy Spirit God, in fact, is constantly challenging us to grow.

At each stage we face obstacles and hurdles, temptations and deceit. They are indirectly a call from God to sharpen our Act of Faith in order to reach the deepest part of the Church.

* "Leaning on the Flesh": our act of faith leans on human motives, using human means, human ways, human thoughts, human goals.

For greater development see here.

175- The Future of the Church : Adult Catechesis

Part I: Understanding the Christian Journey

The following three tables show us the different stages of becoming fully Christian until a “holy death” is achieved. The first table shows us what primarily falls under the responsibility, the grace and the means of the Parish, namely, the Priestly Function of the Church. The following two tables reveal what usually primarily falls under the expertise, spirit and service of the Prophetic side of the Church, that is, the Desert (see St Antony the Great's call to follow Jesus and search for God in the solitude of the Desert). In these tables, then, we have a full description of the journey of growth of the individual, as he receives the entire gift that Jesus came to give him.

Furthermore, in this journey two important turning points can be identified:

1- The First Conversion. After a journey of preparation that can sometimes last either many years or just a few months, this is characterised by four steps leading up to becoming a Christian (see Sherry Weddell, “Intentional Discipleship”) or to renewing faith (with an Alpha Course for instance),

2- The Second Conversion.This involves a more direct and personal intervention of the Holy Spirit, that generates a personal relationship with Christ characterised by a long journey wherein abundant graces are offered. It is called the "second conversion" to distinguish it from the first.

The journey between the two conversions is of the utmost importance because it lays the foundations of a Christian Life. It is generally called "Catechesis" and is characterised by the traditional preparation for Baptism and the period that follows it. The actual Catechism of theCatholic Churchis the main tool for this formation. Normally the person who is well formed, who has received adult catechesis, understands the true meaning of his life – a Christian life - and becomes a committed person in the Parish, serving, helping others or even offering catechesis for the young members of the Parish.

In turn the quality of the Catechesis given and the way it is received, together with the quality of the commitment that results from them, determines the growth of the person and instinctively and in most cases gets the person closer and closer to the "Second Conversion". If St Teresa of Avila’s second conversion is closely examined we will see the different elements that contribute to the approach of this second momentous event and how, indeed, they facilitate it. It is vital that we examine this process in the Saint.

Once the person has undergone the Second Conversion, then, a powerful spiritual life starts and grows unceasingly. Of course, here too the individual has to learn many new things and the most important of these being to learn how to ensure a steady growth. The result, significantly, is that this person will start to search for experts in this field in order to draw formation and guidance (the Prophetic side of the Church).

Those individuals who undergo the second conversion are often fewer in number. Their experience of Jesus, of His Love, however, comes like a new "torment". How come? Because once one discovers by experience something really amazing, namely, the Love of Jesus, he or she feels the urge to proclaim this amazing experience out loud to the entire world. The more the person grows, follows all the stages described in the two above-mentioned tables, the more the Fire of the Love of God grows stronger as does also the urge to tell others, which now becomes like a mysterious pain.

These people who are now in the Prophetic area of growth in the Church, often try to invite the normal parishioner into this spiritually rewarding new world they are discovering. However, too often they meet up with those who are incapable of understanding their words or even of understanding their basic ideas. This, in turn, results in their inability to take in the reason for such incomprehension, and more so to understand why they are being met by an impermeable blank wall. In fact, their main concern now becomes: how to trigger the Second Conversion amongst Parishioners.

Two issues are now at stake here: 1- a long-term preparation under definite conditions and 2- short term ones.

1- Adult Catechesis

What people often underestimate today is the importance of a solid and complete Adult Catechesis given to all parishioners. They are not aware that if this stage is not fulfilled, the individual will not possess all the tools needed in order to grow in the Christian faith and life, to be prepared for it and finally to get close to the momentous event in their life awaiting them: the second conversion.

2- Short-Term Elements

There are, nevertheless, short-term elements that help "trigger" the Grace of the Second Conversion, and a careful study of the Conversion of St Teresa of Avila sheds an amazing light on these. This study, by significant contrast, reveals how her heart and emotions were not given to Jesus.

Part II: Adult Catechesis

From Random Parish Activities to Systematic Adult Catechesis

I do not know if you have heard of the initiative of Rosary Coast to Coast, or Rosary on the Coast, organized to pray for important causes in the Church and in society. Fantastic. True. But this initiative gives me an even greater hunger: can't we have the Rosary in the Parishes, not only on the coasts? And also: can't we have some greater: Adult Catechesisin the Parishes – and not just the random Bible Study Groups?

Adult Catechesisis the job of Parish Priests, no?The Curé of Ars actually offered it every day at 11am, for an hour.

Consequences of the Absence of Adult Catechesis?

In my humble view, not imparting AC is the big missing link that massively weakens the Church everywhere. It could be fatal for the future of the Church in many regions. Local churches do not hold the key to eternity as some might think! Just cast your minds back to the many areas of today’s Turkey that were evangelised by St. Paul himself and which flourished for centuries. Today they are just in ruins! No Christianity at all. The same applies to many other regions! I am thinking of the shrinking Catholicism in the Western world, and I also have in mind my own country, France, where occasional attendance at Mass went from 10% of the Catholic population in the 1960s, to 3% in the early 1990s, to 1.75% now, at best.

The rare more spiritual Catholic parishioners today expect and hope other parishioners to be or to become "spiritual" and have a deeper experience of God. But "being spiritual" comes after (and because) of a long journey of formation, i.e. Adult Catechesis in the Parishes. To short cut this stage is a very dangerous decision. This is especially evident when one considers that Catechesis connects Adults to God in four essential and different ways: how to think, how to receive Life, how to act, how to elevate the mind and the heart and pray. If this initial connection is not established a vital step is being overlooked, and people will not continue for long to come to church for Mass on Sunday. If the branches are not connected to the vine, they stop receiving Divine Life, Christ's Life, and eventually they die and are taken off. (see John 15)

Who Imparts Adult Catechesis?

The 1992 Catechism, which is intended for Adults and not for Children, is the chief tool in catechesis. The Cure of Ars is a prime example of the efficacious use of the catechism for adult formation (he used the Catechism of Trent which is quite similar to the 1992 one).

The popular belief that the Curé of Ars was rather "ignorant" or limited intellectually is not supported by the facts dealing with the practical reality of his efforts and beliefs. The fact that he had over 400 books in his personal room contradicts this accusation. He took great care to prepare his teaching. Thus it should come as no surprise that he decided to comment on the Catechism for adults on daily basis at 11 o’clock in the morning. The children, of course, also had theirs given by members of the parish.

The Church invited Parish Priests to make use of the Catechism of Trent, and comment on it throughout the year. The suggestion was that this should take place on Sundays and the entire topics were distributed for Sundays. The said Cure of Ars, who allegedly was limited intellectually, undertook his task on a daily basis!

Today adults are left without solid food. If we look at the four main divisions of the 1992 Catechism we note that today adults: do not know what to think of Faith and life and how to think (1. the Creed); they do not know the richness of the Gift of God and how to receive God's graces (2. the Sacraments); they do not have a clear idea of how to act in daily life (3. The Commandments), and surprisingly their prayer – if it is still there – is often reduced to the bare minimum (4. Prayer and the Our Father). Solid, profound, insightful and practical Adult Catechesis provides the four above-mentioned vital needs.

Who is supposed to teach them? The Curé of Ars gives us a clear answer, teaching by example. He taught relentlessly on a daily basis, at 11 am, for an hour; to adults! We can conclude then that his answer is: it is up to the Parish Priest - who is trained for this – to do it.

It constitutes the "job description" of a Priest. Actually, when you look at the Documents of the Church it can be quickly deduced that this is the priest’s primary job, before even providing the Sacraments!

Why do Priests still Hesitate?

There are many reasons as to why a priest feels he cannot do this:

1- Adults will not come, they are busy

2- Adults are not interested in this

3- Catechism is already being taught (at a younger age, so: they know)

4- I wouldn't know where to start

5- I am not sure I am capable of doing this, which harks back to the lack of training adapted to catechesis in Theology-Pastoral Theology)

6- I think adults know more about life than we do (intellectually and life experience wise)

7- I don't see the point of offering Catechesis for adults

8- Adults don't like to be told what to think and what to do...

I think it would be wise, here, to consider the advisability of running a normal Christian life in our Parishes based on the catechesis adult parishioners received when they were young. To do so is to consider that catechesis for the young is similar to catechesis for the adult, and also that the 1992 Catechism is for young people. In the final analysis it is to consider that it has no relevance for an adult today.

Adults, who have great responsibilities, are thirsty for solid food, clear concrete guidance, as adults. The "Priest is the source of this knowledge" (see Malachi 2:7), this practical knowledge! Otherwise, what is the use of Theology and Theological studies? If Theology is no longer a source of spiritual sustenance, then the problem has to be faced at a higher level: reforming Theology itself, by making it more "Integral", so that it becomes spiritual food for the individual, and not some nice abstract historical notion with little relevance and implication for people who live in the "real world" of today.

Links: On "Integral Theology"

On Spiritual "Topography"

On Spiritual Demography of a Parish
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