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104 • Part I. The Creed: The Faith Professed
Spirit who has been given to us.” (CCC, no. 733, citing 1 Jn 4:8,
16 and Rom 5:5)
A rich example of the Holy Spirit’s transforming power can be seen
in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. She is God’s
masterpiece, transformed by him into a luminous witness of grace from
the moment of her conception. The angel Gabriel rightly addressed her
as “full of grace.” It is also by the power of the Holy Spirit that Mary
conceived Jesus, the Son of God.
Finally, through Mary, the Holy Spirit begins to bring men, the
objects of God’s merciful love,
into communion
with Christ.
And the humble are always the first to accept him: shepherds,
magi, Simeon and Anna, the bride and groom at Cana, and the
first disciples. (CCC, no. 725)
THE HOLY SPIRIT IS REVEALED GRADUALLY
The Holy Spirit is the last of the Persons of the Trinity to be revealed. St.
Gregory Nazianzus (AD 329-389) gives us an excellent picture of God’s
teaching method, slowly unfolding the truth about the Trinity. Scripture
reveals the truth about the Trinity in three stages:
The Old Testament proclaimed the Father clearly, but the Son
more obscurely. The New Testament revealed the Son and gave
us a glimpse of the divinity of the Spirit. Now the Spirit dwells
among us and grants us a clearer vision of himself. (CCC,
no. 684, citing St. Gregory Nazianzus,
Theological Orations
,
5, 26)
The fact that the Holy Spirit is God—equal in being with the Father
and the Son, of the same divine nature as they are (
consubstantial
with
them), the Third Person of the Holy Trinity—took time to be recognized
and proclaimed. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit is hidden but
is at work. “When the Church reads the Old Testament, she searches
there for what the Spirit, ‘who has spoken through the prophets,’ wants
to tell us about Christ” (CCC, no. 702). Both the Hebrew word and
the Greek word for the
Spirit
originally meant a “breath,” or “air,” or