This Holy Spirit we must seek and must earn. St. Hilary of Poitiers

 




Let us therefore make use of this great benefit, and seek for personal experience of this most needful Gift. For the Apostle says, in words I have already cited, `But we have not received the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we may know the things that are given unto us by God.’

 

We receive Him, then, that we may know. Faculties of the human body, if denied their exercise, will lie dormant. The eye without light, natural or artificial, cannot fulfill its office; the ear will be ignorant of its function unless some voice or sound be heard; the nostrils unconscious of their purpose unless some scent be breathed.

 

Not that the faculty will be absent, because it is never called into use, but that there will be no experience of its existence.

 

So, too, the soul of man, unless through faith it have appropriated the gift of the Spirit, will have the innate faculty of apprehending God, but be destitute of the light of knowledge.

 

That Gift, which is in Christ, is One, yet offered, and offered fully, to all; denied to none, and given to each according to the measure of his willingness to receive; its stores the richer, the more earnest the desire to earn them. This gift is with us unto the end of the world, the solace of our waiting, the assurance, by the favors which He bestows, of the hope that shall be ours, the light of our minds, the sun of our souls.

 

This Holy Spirit we must seek and must earn, and then hold fast by faith and obedience to the commands of God. St. Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity, Book II

 

1 comment

  1. So the Spirit is the light, sound and touch of God upon the soul by which we experience God….but blind men cannot see, the deaf cannot hear and lepers cannot feel. When Christ comes the blind see, the deaf hear and the lepers are healed.

    It is strange. When Christ came and healed so many of their infirmities, sometimes it was with a single touch, in one case he put mud on a blind man’s eyes while another blind man was told to go wash in the pool of Siloam. A woman was heeled by merely touching the hem of his garment and some were healed simply at His command. Some came to Him and were healed of their own infirmities while others came requesting and receiving healing for their loved ones.

    However it comes about, however long it takes, it is clear that Christ must heal me in order for me to have “the eyes to see and the ears to hear” and experience God.

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