Daily Thought For April 24, 2015
The Holy Spirit — The Divine Artist
How wonderful is the work of the artist! By efforts both ardent and gentle he can infuse hard and shapeless materials with the light of his soul. The instruments he uses, though often crude, can impart to these materials exquisite proportions and shapes.
That is the way one may conceive the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, Artist of souls. Is not sanctity the supreme art? God has only one ideal, which, in its prodigious unity and because it is divine, encompasses all the highest forms of beauty. This ideal is Jesus. The Holy Spirit loves him more than an artist loves his ideal. That love is his being, because the Holy Spirit is nothing but love, the personal Love of the Father and of the Word. With divine enthusiasm he comes to the soul—the soul, breath of the Most High, spiritual light that can be united with uncreated Light, exquisite essence that can be transformed into Jesus, reproducing the eternal idea.
That which the human artist dreams of without ever being able to attain, the divine Artist accomplishes because he is perfect and infinite. His action is not exterior nor intermittent, but intimate and constant. He enters into the depths of our souls, penetrates the innermost recesses, and takes up his permanent dwelling there to produce later on his magnificent work.…
… [T]he first relationship that the Holy Spirit has with us is that of being the delightful Guest—dulcis Hospes animae—as the Church calls him in the inspired prose of the Mass of Pentecost. Without doubt, the entire Blessed Trinity dwells within the soul living the life of grace, as it is to dwell eternally within the soul living the life of glory—the full and joyous expansion of the life of grace.…
Without this dwelling of the Holy Spirit in us we cannot “become Christ.” “Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him” (Rom 8:9). Grace and charity, which are the life of our souls, have relationship with the Spirit who dwells in us, because “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom 5:5).…
And the Holy Spirit does not come to us in a transitory manner. Infinite Love is not a passing visitor who pays us a call and then goes away. He establishes in us his permanent dwelling and lives in intimate union with our souls as their eternal Guest. Jesus promised this to us on the last night of his mortal life: “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you” (Jn 14:16–17).
Martinez, L. (2011). Secrets of the Spirit: Wisdom from Luis Martinez. (G. Santos, Ed.) (pp. 39–41). Boston, MA: Pauline Books & Media.