THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE INFINITE PERSONAL GOD
                       
Acts 13:2 While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”

Here is a typical scene from the book of Acts. The thriving congregation of Antioch, led by gifted men, is described for us, and we are told that these leaders are ministering to the Lord Jesus Christ, that is, they are speaking warmly of him to one another, singing his praise, praying to him and fasting, in other words, temporarily denying themselves earthly comforts in order to fix their minds more on their Saviour. Then somehow in the midst of this there was a voice from heaven. We don’t know exactly the manner in which it occurred, but I tend to believe that there was an audible voice just as at the baptism and transfiguration of Jesus and like the voice Saul of Tarsus heard on the road to Damascus. During redemptive history such supernatural events could occurr. It could have been some kind of clear conviction suddenly fixed in every one of their minds . . . whatever . . . the consequence was an absolute certainty shared by them all that the Holy Spirit was saying, “Set apart for my purpose and my own work these two men, Barnabas and Saul,” and so the extraordinary ministry of the apostle Paul was launched. There was a work that the Spirit of God was calling these two men to do. It was the Lord Jesus Christ that the leaders of the church had been worshipping, but the response, in the time of worship came from the Holy Spirit. It was not in the form of strong feelings, or a heightened sense of a divine presence, but of the Spirit actually addressing them and telling them they must obey him in very practical details, in ordaining and commissioning these two to missionary service. Here was Almighty God’s response; it was God who heard their prayer; it was the God who is there, the God who is omniscient; the God who is omnipresent but it is the God who is also a personal God. The God who is and who is not silent, that God speaks, and he says, “Set apart for me these two men. I have called them to do a work for me.” That God who spoke was the Holy Spirit; that is what we are told. The Holy Spirit himself said those words.

There is great ignorance today of the person and work of the Holy Spirit, both theological and experiential, although there is much talk about him, and many claims that he is at work in special ways in individuals and in congregations. The claims can intimidate and tyrannize but they have no more authority than the men and women who make them. Our consciences are not bound by such claims, but we dare not underestimate the crucial importance of the work of the Spirit. We know this, that the Son of God became incarnate, died the cruel death of the cross, rose and ascended to the throne of heaven in order to pour out the Spirit at Pentecost and to continue ever since that day pouring him out on the church everywhere. Without the gift of the Holy Spirit all the earlier accomplishments of the Saviour would have profited men nothing. The essential, vital, central element in the life of every congregation is the person and work of the Spirit of God as illuminated and structured and informed and judged by the Spirit-breathed word.

The climax of Jesus’ ministry is found in the Upper Room discourse where we hear him often teaching the Twelve about the coming of the Spirit. There is no good in any of us which is not a result of the Spirit’s work. Every virtue we possess and every victory won, and every thought of holiness are his alone. Whatever God calls us to do in life we can accomplish only by the Holy Spirit. Without him we can do nothing. There is no spiritual good we shall ever attain without the Spirit. Every new Christian added to a church has become a believer through the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit. Every Christian who completes the course and enters glory has been kept and prepared for the beatific vision by the power of the Spirit. The only sin for which there is no forgiveness is one committed against the Spirit. What errors and heresies have crept into the church in the last two thousand years all in the name of the Holy Spirit! How diligent we need to be in studying and knowing about the person and work of the third person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit. If a seminary turned out a hundred times more preachers than it is now doing the churches would not be one whit better off unless God was pleased to give a fresh outpouring of his Holy Spirit.

1. THE HOLY SPIRIT IS A PERSON.

There were actual men called Mars, and Hoover, and Kellog, and Ford, and Scholl who invented chocolate bars, and vacuum cleaners, and corn flakes, and motor cars, and clog sandals. Real persons lay behind such materials that we use daily and refer to with scarcely a thought of their designers. We have depersonalized them; we ‘hoover’ the floor, and we eat a Mars, and have Kellogs for breakfast, and drive a Ford. We have totally depersonalized the persons who gave their names to what they made. We equate the people with their products and we ignore the inventors completely. We must be careful not to do that with the Holy Spirit. He is not merely a background influence in the church like the heating system, or responsible for congregational excitement like crowd dynamics at a rock concert, or the agent of raw power like electricity, or an extraordinary means of communication like the world wide web. He may well be heat and excitement and power and communication, but before he is any of them he is a person; he has personality. He is as much a divine person as God the Father or as Jesus the Son. Most of the cults deny this. They will quote Scripture to support their views. They will say, “Consider Acts chapter two, and what do we read? The Holy Spirit is poured out (v.18). He is shed abroad (v.33). How can you pour out a person? You cannot pour out the Prime Minister, or pour out David Beckham. The Spirit is an influence of God not a person.” That is one way they deny the personal nature of God the Spirit. Having rubbished the doctrine of the Trinity it is incumbent upon them to reject the Spirit as a divine person or they are confronting some rival deity who has all the attributes and titles of God himself.

How do we answer them about the terminology of Pentecost? By pointing out that the ‘pouring out’ language of Acts two is figurative. Water can be poured down in a severe cloud burst and baptizes an entire audience; many are touched. Even so the Holy Spirit descended with mighty influence on the Day of Pentecost. He affected 120 disciples of Jesus filling them all with himself, and he also regenerated three thousand unbelievers. They were all spiritually dead and he made them alive. He did not change one man here, and a teenager there; he came like the Niagara Falls; he was poured out upon the multitude. He was shed abroad like a monsoon on all Jerusalem as the crowds heard Peter preach. Those Jerusalem sinners, as spiritually dry as old sticks and dusty stones, were drenched by the Spirit as he was “poured out” and “shed abroad” on the congregation. The true hermeneutic explaining that it is a figurative expression affirms the personality of the Spirit.

We insist that the Spirit is a person, in other words an entity that is intelligent and voluntary, with a will, and understanding, and affection, and intentionality, and individuality. All the elements that constitute personality are ascribed to him and are found in him. He is not deficient in any moral quality like kindness, and patience, and gentleness, and wisdom, and restraint, and joy, and goodness. He has such life in himself just as the Father has life in himself and the Son has life in himself. Let me break it down in a number of ways in establishing that the Spirit is a person.

i] The Scriptures use personal pronouns when they talk of the Holy Spirit. They don’t say ‘it’ as you would if you were talking of electricity or nuclear power; Scripture says, ‘he.’ In Antioch the Spirit said, “Separate to me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (Acts 13:2). The Spirit of God says ‘me’ and ‘I’. That is also how the Lord Jesus Christ spoke of him, “When the Counsellor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me” (Jn. 15:26). ‘Whom,’ says Jesus, ‘he’ says Jesus. What is grammatically interesting is that the phrase ‘Spirit of truth’ uses the neuter gender for Spirit but it is immediately followed by the word ‘he.’ If John wanted us to believe that the Spirit of God were merely a force that was impersonal and neuter then this would be the perfect place to do so, but John says ‘he’ straight away. Or you can see his personhood again more clearly in John 16 and the thirteenth and fourteenth verses; you can count the eight ‘he’s’ and him’s’ in these verses; “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.”  There is no grammatical reason at all to use the masculine pronouns, but Jesus does so and thus makes the cults utterly without excuse for denying the personality of the Holy Spirit. The Lord Christ has said, “If I depart I will send him unto you” (Jn. 16:7).

ii] The Scriptures ascribe personal properties of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit can be lied to; Peter says to Ananias, “you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land?” (Acts 5:3). You wouldn’t say, “I told a lie to the electrical current, or to the water fountain.” It is people you deceive. Again Paul tells the Ephesians not to “grieve the Holy Spirit” (Ephs. 5:3). You cannot grieve an abstraction or a force. You would not weep in shame because you had grieved the law of gravity, but you should weep when you have caused grief in someone who loves you, whom you also love. I am saying that the Holy Spirit is set forth as a person whom we may either please or offend, obey or defy, who can love or be loved, someone to whom we relate personally.

iii] The Scriptures ascribe personal tasks to the Spirit. For example, as we have seen, he has the power of speech and so he addressed the leaders of the church in Antioch. Then Paul tells Timothy, “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith” (I Tim. 4:1). Jesus says to the seven churches, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” (Rev. 2:7). He also teaches; Jesus says of the Spirit, “He shall teach you all things” (Jn. 14:26). What impersonal power could teach us everything? Of course we could learn elementary lessons from hurricanes, and micro-wave ovens, and electricity, but hardly “all things.” Only a personal God could do that; “the Spirit shall teach you all things.”

Again, Jesus tells his disciples that they are not to worry when they are put on trial and face accusations and interrogations. How will they defend themselves? How will they know what to say? Don’t worry; “the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say.” (Lk. 12:12). So the teaching does not come rollercoasting or juggernauting towards us in some insensitive and mechanical way, flattening all before it. The Holy Spirit does not brainwash; the Holy Spirit is not Big Brother. He is not like the answering machine of a big company that infuriates you with its various options, telling you to press the number 1 or 2 or 3 to get an answer. The Spirit appreciates individual need and personality differences. Here is one unique Christian lady on the spot, and he is sensitive to the plight of that woman inform her exactly what to say. How else can you explain the women and teenagers who answered so brilliantly their inquisitors when facing the stake for their Protestant convictions?

Again, the Spirit intercedes, that is, he actually prays for us. We are told, “The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express” (Roms. 8:26). There is a personal God in glory, the man Christ Jesus our great high priest, who ever lives to make intercession for us, and there is also a personal God here with us on earth, the indwelling Holy Spirit who also prays for us. He is not like a Tibetan prayer wheel mechanically going round and round in the wind. He has a distinct loving personality – just like your best friend who has prayed for you. How could we cope with cross-bearing and the opposition of the world without the Spirit interceding for us?

Christ is our Advocate on high: Thou art our Advocate within;
O, plead the truth, and make reply to every argument of sin.
                                                (Alfred H. Vine 1845-1917)

iv] The Scriptures ascribe personal characteristics to the Spirit. For example there are four recorded occasions when Jesus calls the Spirit the ‘paraclete.’ The word is derived from a prefix para and a root kalein and together they mean ‘one who is called alongside.’ In the world of Jesus’ day a paraclete was someone summoned to give assistance in a court of law. The paraclete was a barrister or counsel who pleaded your case in court. It is used like that of Jesus himself in the opening verse of the second chapter of John’s first epistle, “we have one who speaks to the Father in our defence - Jesus Christ, the Righteous One” (I Jn. 2:1). At the tribunal of God, in that tremendous day, the Judge will be the Saviour who died for our sins. But more than that, the defense lawyer who will speak up for us will also be the Saviour who died for our sins. Who can fear such a trial? So Jesus is our paraclete, but the Holy Spirit is another paraclete of ours. He helps us in our weakness. He intercedes for us according to the will of God. He defends us and he convicts of their sin those who would destroy us. He comforts and consoles us just like the Father will wipe away the tears from our eyes – the Comforter. He is the most tender-hearted source of solace that the church can ever have. Sometimes you hear a Christian saying about some aspect of ministry, “That is not my forte.” He is talking of an area of witness or counseling or writing in which area he feels very inadequate; that is not his forte, but the Holy Spirit is the forte of every Christian. We can do all things through the Spirit who strengthens us. Wherever God places us; whatever the tasks we are given to do, it is an insult to the Holy Spirit to refuse to do a duty the church gives us. He is the one who strengthens us when we come onto the front line of Christian service. “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:8).

So our conclusion is that the Holy Spirit is a person; he is not an influence, or a quality, or force, or power, or some emanation from God. He is as much a person as Jesus, but like the angels and also like the Father he who is the Holy Spirit does not possess a body. He is spirit. R.C. Sproul says how he was planning to marry his wife Vesta when he was suddenly converted in 1957. He was excited in telling her the news of having become a Christian, but her response was not warm. She was unhappy and fearful of this change, and remained so for months. Then one night she was persuaded reluctantly to accompany him to a prayer meeting. R.C. had been praying for her with lengthy importunity. She was suspicious but she went, and there, in the middle of the prayer meeting, like John Wesley at Aldersgate, she felt her heart “strangely warmed.” After the meeting was over she said these words to the theologian, who over fifty years later is still her husband, “Now I know who the Holy Spirit is.”  “Now” – unlike the years of religion that had gone before when she had known the phrase ‘the Holy Spirit’ but knew nothing about what that phrase meant. Now she knew who the Spirit was. She did not say that she knew what the Spirit was. Her first response to the Spirit having given her a birth from above was that she knew him as a person.

2. THE HOLY SPIRIT IS GOD.

In the history of the church there have been only a few disputes concerning the question of the deity of the Holy Spirit. There have been significant debates about the Lord Jesus; for example, could it be said unequivocally that Christ was God? Through such controversies the Scriptures were examined minutely and there was final agreement that Jesus Christ is God. The church concluded in its confessions that Jesus has all the attributes of God, all the names of God, all the prerogatives of God. He is as much God as the Father is God. That is the revelation of Christ found in Scripture.

Such disputes about the divinity of the Holy Spirit in the history of the Church are unusual, and the reason for that is because the Bible so lucidly declares that the Spirit possesses every divine attribute and exercises the sovereign authority of God. Such teaching is clear and unchallengeable in Scripture. Let us turn to some of the evidence substantiating this claim.

i] The Holy Spirit is expressly called God. Even in the Jehovah Witnesses’ own New World translation of the Bible this fact cannot be expunged. I am thinking again of  the incident recorded in Acts 5 where Peter says to Ananias, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn't it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God.” (Acts 5:3&4). In verse three Peter’s words are, “You have lied to the Holy Spirit.” In verse four Peter says, “You have . . . lied . . . to God.” Here is someone who was born and raised a Jew, whose great confession was “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.” Peter had a deep in-built hatred of idolatry. Yet this man, who spent three years in the presence of Christ, identifies the Spirit completely with God.

The same background and convictions of Peter were also shared by the apostle Paul of God being one, and yet Paul calls Christians the “temple of God” and the reason he does so is this, “the Spirit of God dwells in you” (I Cor. 3:16). Again an individual Christian is designated “the temple of the Holy Spirit” and so the appeal is made to him, “therefore glorify God in your body” (I Cor. 6:19&20). Paul even says to them that they are “the temple of the living God” (2 Cor. 6:16); he is referring directly to the Holy Spirit as the living God. Or again in the first letter to the Corinthians chapter twelve, a section where Paul deals with the matter of gifts which the Spirit gives, the apostle speaks of all the three persons of the Godhead like this, “the same Spirit” (v.4), and then in the next verse, “the same Lord” (v.5), and in the next verse, “the same God” (v.6). Notice the priority of the persons listed, firstly Paul writes of the Spirit, then the Lord and lastly God.

ii] The Holy Spirit is referred to in the New Testament as the author and the spokesman of those Scriptures which in the Old Testament are claimed to be spoken by Jehovah. Now everyone comes to notice that in the Old Testament the expressions, ‘God said’ and ‘the Spirit said’ are used interchangeably. In other words, the activity of God in revealing his truth to the prophets is acknowledged to be the activity of the Holy Spirit. There is not a membrane between the Spirit and Jehovah. That is in the Old Testament, but what is fascinating in the New Testament is that when the words of the LORD, that is, Jehovah, are quoted by Paul then that New Testament apostle might tell us that it was the Holy Spirit who was speaking those words. One example of this is in Acts 28 and verse 25 where Paul is quoting from the commission that the prophet Isaiah received in the temple as recorded in Isaiah chapter six. In the book of Isaiah it is the Lord who speaks to the prophet and says, “Go and tell the people . . .” (Is. 6:9), but when Paul quotes him in Acts he says, “The Holy Spirit spoke rightly through Isaiah the prophet to our fathers” (Acts 28:25). So what Jehovah said the Holy Spirit said. There is a complete oneness of identity. We all know from a glance at the Old Testament that it was Jehovah speaking by the mouth of the prophets, and yet when Peter refers to this he says that holy men of old spoke by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:20). So if Jehovah spoke then the Holy Spirit was speaking too.

iii] The Holy Spirit displays all the perfections of God.
A) The Holy Spirit is omniscient; he knows everything exhaustively, and the glory of that truth is not his knowledge of creation but the Holy Spirit’s knowledge of the infinite God himself. In other words, there is nothing in God that is unknown to the Spirit. I shall never know God exhaustively. For all eternity I shall have the mind of a creature, which, however enlightened and de-sinned and glorified it may become, will still be a finite mind, limited by space and my own creatureliness. I could easily hold an average sized brain in the palms of my hands. In contrast to me the Godhead is measureless and infinite – what a bottomless abyss is God! Yet when Paul writes of the Holy Spirit he says this, “The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no-one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God” (I Cor. 6:10&11). There is no part of God which is a no go area for the Spirit. God has no secrets that he withholds from the Spirit. The Holy Spirit may go in and in and into God. He can go into the deep things of God, how God can be one and yet three persons. He searches all things. All the unspoken thoughts of God, whatever they may be, are known to the Spirit. The Father holds no secrets from the Son or the Spirit. Jesus once said some words which the Spirit could also say, “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No-one knows the Son except the Father, and no-one knows the Father except the Son” (Matt. 11:27). No-one knows Father and Son save the Spirit. So, the Holy Spirit is omniscient because he knows God himself exhaustively; all the things of God have been committed to the Spirit because he is God.

B) The Holy Spirit is omnipresent. He is in our lives as believers; he is present in blessing wherever two or three gather together in the name of Jesus. There is nowhere he is not; he is in Soho, Red Square, in Tiananmen Square, in the gatherings of the London Atheist Society. He is in the heart of the atom, in the oceans’s depths, at the core of the earth, in the Milky Way, in the furthest recesses of space from which faint radio signals emanate. He is also there in the great silence beyond that. So there are no booby traps men may discover to explode in their faces. We needn’t hesitate to explore the cosmos with excitement. We will never come across anything anywhere marked by the absence of the Spirit of God. What will be discovered will bear plentiful evidences of his creative and sustaining energy. So we read Psalm 139, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you” (vv.7-12)

Where the Spirit is, there God is. There is no place for rebel sinners or fugitives to hide which is out of reach from the presence of the Holy Spirit; he is ubiquitous. Such an attribute belongs to the being of God and is not shared by any creatures. Mary the mother of Jesus does not have attributes like that. The archangels have no ability to be in more than one place at a time; they are all finite created spirits. They remain bound in space and time. They belong to the order of creatures. Not so the Holy Spirit; he is omnipresent.

C) He is also the Creator. To create is a divine attribute. No one can create everything out of nothing and ‘very good’ save God alone. Yet we meet the active Holy Spirit moving before the first day of creation. The Bible begins thus, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” (Gen. 1:1&2). And that theme of the work of the Spirit in creation is repeated in different places in the Bible. The psalmist says, “You send forth your Spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the earth” (Psa. 104:30). Job comments on the same powerful work, “The Spirit of the Lord has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life” (Job 33:4).  But more than that, the Holy Spirit was the source of the miraculous power that begat God the Son in the womb of the virgin Mary; “The angel answered and said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One which is to be born will be called the Son of God” (Lk. 1:25). He creates life where there was none. How was Jesus Christ raised from the dead? Hear the words of Paul, “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you” (Roms 8:11).

D) The Spirit is also the absolutely holy one. In other words, it is not merely that the ‘mechanical’ properties of power and might are his but the moral qualities too. God is the holy One. The seraphim cover their eyes before him and cry to one another, “Holy . . . holy . . . isn’t he so holy?” (Isa. 6). The Lord is described as “glorious in holiness” but when the chief title is given to the third person of the Godhead he is called the ‘Holy Spirit’ or ‘the Spirit of holiness.’ In other words he has all the moral perfections of God. So the fruit that the Spirit creates and sustains in those he indwells are all fruit of righteousness, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gals. 5:22&23). The Spirit is like God, but of course he is not like God at all; he is God and so the perfections of God are all his. The Spirit of God is loving . . . joyful . . . peaceful . . . patient . . . kind . . . good . . . faithful . . . gentle . . . and self-controlled.

iv] The Holy Spirit displays the Sovereignty of God. We recognize that from our own experience. Salvation is of the Lord, that is, salvation is applied to men and women as the Spirit of the Lord determines. Jesus makes that clear to Nicodemus in their dialogue in John chapter three; “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (Jn. 3:8). You cannot say, “Come here wind on this hot day and blow on my cheek.” The wind blows wherever it pleases not as you direct. You cannot say you will go and preach in such a place and nine people will be converted. You cannot say, “I am going to talk to my erring daughter and convert her.” Regeneration is not yours to perform. You cannot announce and publicise a forthcoming revival in a certain town. This is the Spirit’s grand prerogative, and in that honour none shall share. You cannot say that you will go and perform a miracle in Merthyr Tydfil tonight where a man with Down’s Syndrome is going to be delivered of that syndrome when you lay your hands on him. Works of the Spirit are sovereign and done at his discretion. We recognize that from our own experience, but the sovereignty of the Spirit is most powerfully seen in his relationship with God the Son. It was the Spirit who formed the incarnate Son in Mary’s womb. Who but God could do that? It was the Spirit who anointed Christ at his baptism for his public ministry. Who but God could anoint God the Son? It was the Spirit who led Jesus into the wilderness. Who but a divine person had the right to direct the Mediator? Do the sheep direct the Shepherd or the Shepherd direct the sheep? Where does authority lie? To whom but God would the Redeemer have submitted for leading? What a sovereign Spirit he is!

So we have said that the Holy Spirit is a person, and the Holy Spirit is God. So that is why you find our Lord commissioning the church to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations and baptize them “in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). One name. One divine name, and yet three distinct persons. The Father is God. The Son is God, and the Spirit is God. These three are one God. You realise how unacceptable and impossible it would be to read there that we are to baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the apostle Paul or “and Peter” or “and Mary.” But when you see how the Spirit is as much a person as the Father and the Son, and that he has all the divine attributes and prerogatives and perfections then it is essential that we say, “Father, Son and Spirit” – the blessed Trinity. That is simply how God is, and you have been joined to him, particularly now we are considering being united with the Holy Spirit, this infinite-almighty and yet personal God, and you are one with him for ever. What hope that should give you for the future.

Or again when you hear the words of apostolic benediction spoken slowly and reverently at the end of every service, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14), then you know that they are equal in their love for you and their power to redeem and sanctify you. You know that it should be utterly unacceptable for a Roman Catholic to hear a benediction that spoke of Christ’s grace, and God’s love and the intercession of Mary being with us all. God forbid! But the phrase, “fellowship of the Holy Spirit” sets the Spirit in his right place in the ineffable unity of the divine nature with the Father and the Son, co-essential, co-eternal, and co-equal. You are not alone; you are never alone. You are in daily communion with God the Holy Spirit. May he be with us all for evermore.

18th May 2008  GEOFF THOMAS