Strengthened by the Spirit of Love

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Pentecostés by Juan Bautista Maíno, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Our human love is weak; but divine love is power itself, since it is the very root of being. Confirmation signifies the dwelling of the Spirit of love in the spirit of a person. He will not be alone to face the world, but rather infused with strength from God—not the phony strength of worldliness or of brutality, but the strength of that unconquerable faith that filled the saints.

The idea that virtue should spring out of the Holy Spirit may be understood by analogy to human love. We find that when two people fall in love, their personalities frequently change. A person, previously very smart in the sense of worldly shrewdness, through wonder at the reality of love will become smart in the sense of being gifted with understanding. A hard, ambitious person may become one characterised by fidelity to love and the spirit of sacrifice. Just as these qualities flow out of the inner experience of human love, so do the gifts of the Holy Spirit flow from the inner bond of love the Spirit brings. Real Christian love is so much stronger than any attempt to become virtuous simply through idealism, because the Spirit of love becomes ours in a much more intimate way through the sacraments...

If the idea of the Holy Spirit is still vague to you, think of it in terms of the irrepressible yearning within you to be saved from a life fragmented by so many conflicting desires and fears, ambitions and frustrations. Or think of it as that flame which you detected in some ardent priest or sister or lay person who conveyed to you something of Christianity that you can never succeed in forgetting.