Co-Workers of the Truth 5/14

The Holy Spirit is a divine Person who is neither isolated from the other two Persons nor subject to such isolation.  It is his particular property to manifest to us the unity of the trinitatrian God.  When, in th history of salvation that we commemorate from Christmas to Easter, the distinction between Father and Son is seen to be that of mission and obedience, the Spirit is not portrayed as a Third Person close to or between them; he maked manifest to us the unity of the Godhead. 

To contemplate him means to overcome our diversity and to recognize the ring of Eternal Love, which is the supreme Unity.  It is impossible to speak of the Spirit without speaking of the Holy Trinity.  If the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is intended to be, in a certain sense, the correction of a one-sided Christocentrism, then the corrective consists in the fact that the Spirit teaches us to see Christ entirely in the mystery of the trinitarian God – as our Way to the Father, with whom he is in constant communion of Love.  The Holy Spirit points to the Trinity and, precisely for that reason, points to us as well.  For the trinitarian God is the prototype of  a new and unified humanity, the prototype of the Church, which was founded on Jesus’ prayer: “…that they may be one, as we are one” (Jn 17:11). 

The Trinity is the model and foundation of the Church, which is to bring to fruition the word of creation: “Let us make mankind in our image, according to our likeness” (Gen 1:26).  In the Church, mankind , which in its want of unity had become the exact antithesis of God, was to become the one Adam, whose image – so the Fathers of the Church tell us -was torn by sin and now lies scattered around us.  The divine model of mankind will appear again in the Church in the unity in which “we are one”.

From Bavarian Radio Broadcast, 5/19/1986