The Desire to Feel the Spirit

Some believers carry a precise desire: to feel the Holy Spirit, to know from within what others describe, a presence, a warmth, a light, perhaps a vision. This desire can spring from a pure motive. It does not seek the enjoyment of an emotion: it wants to know what it is, in order to speak of it truthfully, to bear witness to it, to teach it to others. One asks it of God, with uprightness, with perseverance. And nothing happens. This silence has a meaning, and it teaches more than the experience asked for.

Gifts freely distributed

Sensible graces, visions, and inward touches belong to the gifts God distributes according to his will alone. No prayer commands them, no disposition merits them, no method produces them: “It is one and the same Spirit who works all this, distributing his gifts to each one as he wills.” 1 Corinthians 12:11 Christ himself compares the Spirit to the wind: “The wind blows where it wills: you hear its voice, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” John 3:8 These gifts escape all grasp, and their presence or absence measures holiness not at all: God grants them to whom he wills, for the good of the Church, and great saints have passed their whole lives without receiving any.

Knowing what it is

The desire to know what it feels like deserves the same examination. At bottom it aims higher than an emotion: it wants to know God from within, and that desire is good, God has placed it in man. A sensible grace, even received, would not satisfy it: what the soul feels then is an effect of God in it, a touch laid in its sensibility, and God as he is remains beyond what these graces make one feel. Here below, the knowledge of God passes through faith: “We walk by faith, and not by sight.” 2 Corinthians 5:7 And Paul locates the hour when this desire will be satisfied: “Now we see in a mirror, dimly; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know as I am known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12 To know fully what it is belongs to heaven: “we shall see him as he is.” 1 John 3:2 The desire therefore reaches further than anything an experience here below could give, and God, by refusing it, keeps for that desire its true answer, the vision face to face.

An experience that is not transmitted

The motive of teaching deserves to be examined, for it rests on a supposition: that the experience, once received, could be recounted. Paul is the witness who denies it. He received the highest graces, caught up to the third heaven, and here is what he reports of it: “he was caught up to paradise, and he heard inexpressible words, which man is not permitted to repeat.” 2 Corinthians 12:4 The one who received the most is also the one who declares the thing untransmittable. What God gives a soul to taste is given to it alone. The one who has received it can describe its effects, its signs, the conduct it calls for, and the Church has gathered such testimonies; the thing itself stays beyond words: the one who listens receives an account, he does not receive the experience. The experience asked for, even granted, would therefore give teaching one more account, and of such accounts Scripture already holds several: Isaiah before the throne (Isaiah 6), Ezekiel before the glory of the Lord (Ezekiel 1), John caught up in spirit at Patmos (Revelation 1), Paul caught up to the third heaven (2 Corinthians 12:2).

What is given suffices for teaching

For teaching, everything is already given. Moses says it at the end of his last discourse: “The hidden things belong to the Lord our God; the revealed things are for us and for our children forever.” Deuteronomy 29:28 The hidden things are what God keeps in himself without having made known, his secret designs and the depth of his judgments; the revealed things, all that he has handed to men to be believed and lived. God himself fixed this division, and what he has revealed, Scripture and the faith of the Church, contains all that one man must transmit to another. Christ teaches the same sufficiency in the parable of the wicked rich man: the rich man, in torment, begs that a dead man be sent to warn his brothers, convinced that an extraordinary sign would persuade them better than the Scriptures; Abraham answers: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” Luke 16:31 The witness that converts rests on the revealed word; the extraordinary adds nothing to it.

The silence is an answer

God answers this request, and his answer is the silence itself. Paul again experiences it: three times he asked for deliverance from his thorn, and God answered something other than what he asked: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is fully displayed in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9 This thorn came from a messenger of Satan charged to strike him, and the purpose the text gives it is God’s: “Lest the greatness of these revelations should make me proud, a thorn was put in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to strike me, so that I would not become proud.” 2 Corinthians 12:7 Satan strikes to harm; God permits the blow and makes it serve to keep his apostle from pride. The highest experiences are also the most dangerous for the one who receives them, and God, by refusing them, often protects the one who asks for them. His silence also sets the gaze straight. Christ pronounced a beatitude on those who believe without seeing or feeling anything: “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who believe without having seen.” John 20:29 The one who prays feeling nothing and believes all the same walks on that path Christ declares blessed: the silence of God holds him on the purest way of faith.

The way that surpasses the gifts

Paul, after describing the gifts of the Spirit, directs the desire higher: “Aspire to the greater gifts. And I will show you a way that surpasses them all.” 1 Corinthians 12:31 This way is charity, and he sets it above all experiences: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, if I have not charity, I am a sounding brass, a clanging cymbal. Though I have the gift of prophecy, the knowledge of all mysteries and all science, if I have not charity, I am nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:1-2 What teaches others and wins them to God is a life of charity resting on the truth, and that treasure is offered to all, without waiting and without condition. Christ put the spectacular graces back in their place the day his disciples returned marveling at their power over the demons: “Do not rejoice that the spirits are subject to you; rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Luke 10:20

What the Spirit makes known of himself

The Spirit lets himself be known, and he himself has chosen by what. Paul names it: “The fruit of the Spirit is charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” Galatians 5:22-23 Here is the experience of the Spirit offered to all: it is lived in the patience that holds, the peace that remains under trial, the charity that loves without return. It is seen in others, it is verified in oneself, and it can be recounted, for it passes into acts. The one who wanted to feel the Spirit in order to teach him discovers that he already possesses him by the grace of his baptism, that he knows him by his fruits, and that these fruits are precisely the only experience of the Spirit that is transmitted. The desire was good; God fulfills it otherwise, and better.