Ioannes Paulus PP. II
DOMINUM ET VIVIFICANTEM
On the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church
and the World

PART I – THE SPIRIT OF THE FATHER AND OF THE SON, GIVEN TO THE CHURCH

6. The Risen Christ Says: “Receive the Holy Spirit”

At the Jordan, Isaiah’s proclamation is given a concrete form: Jesus of Nazareth is the one who comes in the Holy Spirit and who brings the Spirit as the gift proper to his own Person, in order to distribute that gift by means of this humanity: “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”⁷⁶

Coming from the Father the Holy Spirit is sent by the Father.⁸⁰ The Holy Spirit is first sent as a gift for the Son who was made man, in order to fulfill the messianic prophecies. After the “departure” of Christ the Son, the Johannine text says that the Holy Spirit “will come” directly (it is His new mission), to complete the work of the Son. Thus it will be He who brings to fulfillment the new era of the history of salvation.

The gift made by the Son completes the revelation and giving of the Eternal Love: the Holy Spirit, who in the inscrutable depths of the Divinity is a Person-Gift, through the work of the Son, that is to say by means of the Paschal Mystery, is given to the Apostles and to the Church in a new way, and through them is given to humanity and the whole world.

“A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you,…My Spirit”⁸³; and on the other hand he fulfills His own promise made to the Apostles with the words: “If I go, I will send him to you.”⁸⁴ It is he: the Spirit of truth, the Paraclete sent by the Risen Christ to transform us into His Own Risen Image.⁸⁵

PART III – THE SPIRIT WHO GIVES LIFE

“…the divine filiation planted in the human soul through sanctifying grace is the work of the Holy Spirit. “It is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.”²¹⁵ Sanctifying grace is the principle and source of man’s new life: divine, supernatural life.

“… there is a supernatural “adoption,” of which the source is the Holy Spirit, love and gift. As such he is given to man. And in the superabundance of the uncreated gift there begins in the heart of all human beings that particular created gift whereby they “become partakers of the divine nature.”²¹⁹

4. The Holy Spirit Strengthens the “Inner Man”

The hidden breath of the divine Spirit enables the human spirit to open in its turn before the saving and sanctifying self-opening of God. Through the gift of grace, which comes from the Holy Spirit, man enters a “new life,” is brought into the supernatural reality of the divine life itself and becomes a “dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit,” a living temple of God.²⁵³ For through the Holy Spirit, the Father and the Son come to him and take up their abode with him.²⁵⁴ In the communion of grace with the Trinity, man’s “living area” is broadened and raised up to the supernatural level of divine life. Man lives in God and by God: he lives “according to the Spirit,” and “sets his mind on the things of the Spirit.”

59. Man’s intimate relationship with God in the Holy Spirit also enables him to understand himself, his own humanity, in a new way. Thus that image and likeness of God which man is from his very beginning is fully realized.²⁵⁵

“…precisely by reason of this divine likeness which “shows that on earth man…is the only creature that God wishes for himself”…

(Vatican II adds that the Church is “a sacrament. . . of the unity of all mankind. “Obviously it is a question of the unity which the human race which in itself is differentiated in various ways-has from God and in God. This unity has its roots in the mystery of creation and acquires a new dimension in the mystery of the Redemption, which is ordered to universal salvation. Since God “wishes all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth,”²⁷⁹ the Redemption includes all humanity and in a certain way all of creation. In the same universal dimension of Redemption the Holy Spirit is acting, by virtue of the “departure of Christ.” Therefore the Church, rooted through her own mystery in the Trinitarian plan of salvation with good reason regards herself as the “sacrament of the unity of the whole human race.” She knows that she is such through the power of the Holy Spirit, of which power she is a sign and instrument in the fulfillment of God’s salvific plan.)

The Holy Spirit is the gift that comes into man’s heart together with prayer. … the Holy Spirit not only enables us to pray, but guides us “from within” in prayer: He is present in our prayer and gives it a divine dimension.²⁸³ Thus “he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the Will of God.” ²⁸⁴ Prayer through the power of the Holy Spirit becomes the ever more mature expression of the new man, who by means of this prayer participates in the divine life.

6. The Spirit and the Bride Say: “Come!”

It is the eschatological hope, the hope of definitive fulfillment in God, the hope of the Eternal Kingdom, that is brought about by participation in the life of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit, given to the Apostles as the Counselor, is the guardian and animator of this hope in the heart of the Church. …

CONCLUSION

“…she (the Church) implores the joy and consolation that only He (the Holy Spirit), the true Counselor, can bring by coming down into people’s inmost hearts²⁹⁵; the Church implores the grace of the virtues that merit heavenly glory, implores eternal salvation, in the full communication of the divine life, to which the Father has eternally “predestined” human beings, created through love in the image and likeness of the Most Holy Trinity.