Tag Archives: Holy Spirit

God of All Comfort

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This icon at St. Paul’s K Street in Washington DC shows the Holy Trinity visiting Abraham and Sarah in the Old Testament. It reveals the Kingdom of God as the life of the divine community shared with humans by the Holy Spirit. During the Middle Ages, when people did not receive Holy Communion frequently, they said, “Thy kingdom-thy Spirit-come!” as the equivalent of sharing the divine life through the reception of Holy Communion.


Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. (2 Cor. 1:3-4)

St. Paul writes his second epistle to the Corinthian church about a year after he wrote 1 Corinthians. Some people think II Corinthians is actually parts of two letters put together. We know that the parish in Corinth kept having problems for a long time … St. Clement, one of the early bishops of Rome, wrote letters to the parish in Corinth because they were still having problems in AD 95!

St. Paul begins by blessing God the Father who comforts the Church. Nowadays “comfort” means “feel good” but the Father did not send his Son to make us feel good. “Comfort” used to mean “strengthen” or “make strong.” It means “to be strong with.” The Father gives his Son to make us strong to face affliction and to share this strength with others who are facing various afflictions.

This comfort–strength–is given us by the Holy Spirit. Many times the great preachers and teachers of the past identify the presence of the Holy Spirit with the Kingdom of God; to pray “thy Kingdom come” is asking for the Holy Spirit to come and dwell within us and among us. St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote:

But what does it mean to say that the kingdom of God is within us? It can only mean the gladness which comes from on high to souls through the Spirit! It is like an image and a deposit and a pattern of everlasting grace which the saints enjoy in the time to come. So the Lord summons us through the activity of the Spirit to salvation through our afflictions and to sharing in the goods of the Spirit and his own graces.

St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Christian Way of Life

The Father shares the Spirit to us now so that we can begin to experience a little bit of what eternity is like. We are called to experience the gift–the presence–of the Holy Spirit not as the absence of affliction but as we are experiencing affliction. The presence of the Holy Spirit –Kingdom of God–is not to make us feel good but to enable us to already experience a little of what we will experience in eternity.

Afflictions are our chance to experience the victory of Christ now. Afflictions are the opportunity we have to know that God truly stands with us, no matter what. Afflictions are our chance to share the Good News with others, not by preaching and lecturing but by holding the hand of someone in pain and being strong together with them.

“Thy kingdom come!” The kingdom–the Spirit–is given to us to share, not to hoard for ourselves. The kingdom-Spirit-gospel-comfort is primarily a SOCIAL experience that God is WITH us here and now rather than an individualistic experience of “salvation.”

Charismatic Gifts? Healing and Prophecy

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In this manuscript illumination, Miriam leads the women singing in joy on the shore of the Red Sea after God’s victory over the Egyptians. There are seven women prophets of Israel — Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Esther, and Huldah. These women were inspired by God to tell the Truth, especially when no one wanted to hear it.


There are allotments of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are allotments of services, but the same Lord; and there are allotments of activities, but the same God who works all things in all…. to [some], gifts of healings in the one Spirit… to another prophecy…. One and the same Spirit activates all of these, allotting to each one, as he wills, his or her own gifts. (1 Cor. 12:4-11)

The Apostle Paul is concerned with divisions among the members of the parish in Corinth, especially those who said that certain roles in the community or certain spiritual gifts were more important or more valuable than others. He stresses that all spiritual gifts are given by the same Spirit. All are equally valuable, equally important.

Gifts of healing were a major focus of the residents of Corinth. There was an important sanctuary of Asklepios, the Greek god of healing, in Corinth; he was one of the most popular gods in the ancient world and his shrine at Corinth brought many visitors, hoping to be healed, to the city. People hoping to be healed would usually sleep in the god’s shrine, hoping for a miracle or a dream that would tell them how to be healed. Ritual baths were important at the shrine as well. St. Paul tells the Corinthian Christians that all healing is given by the one Spirit of God and the ritual bath of baptism is the true source of authentic spiritual health-salvation. He wants them to realize that Christ and the Spirit of God–not Asklepios–were the true healers.

Prophets and prophecy are often misunderstood as simply being able to foretell the future. Real prophets were keen observers of people and the world. They were skilled preachers and poets. They were focused on God. Because a prophet was all of these–a skilled preacher, a keen observer, focused on God–they were able to speak the Truth when no one wanted to hear it and to describe what would happen if they continued to deny the Truth and the Reality that they were trying to escape. Prophets were also able to describe what God would do because God was faithful and had made certain promises to his people. A prophet might not always realize how True everything they said was–just as a poet says more than they realize in a poem. The prophets in the Corinthian parish were preachers and teachers who were supposed to build up the community, not tear it down and create divisions.

St. Paul and early Christian preachers were eager to remind people that these gifts were given to both men and women, the old and the young. The record of the Acts of the Apostles described how these gifts were manifest among the early Christians in various places. The most important gift, given to all Christians, is the Holy Spirit himself.

Not everyone has all of these gifts –some have one, and others have another. But we all have the the Gift who is himself the one who gives these other gifts; that is to say, the Holy Spirit.

St. Agustine of Hippo, On the Trinity 15.

Who Can Say “Jesus is Anathema”?

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St. Basil the Great (died AD 379) offers the prayers of the Eucharist at the altar. The Church at prayer was thought to be the clearest revelation of the Holy Spirit. Typically, the scroll in his hands indicates the first few words of the prayer the priest says quietly for himself at the offertory of the Eucharist.


You know that as Gentiles you were marched away to mute idols, however you were led. For this reason I want you to know that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says “Jesus is anathema!” and that no one can say “Jesus is Lord!” except by the Spirit of God. (1 Cor. 12:1-3)

“Anathema” was sometimes used by pagans to mean an offering was no longer available for human use but it was used in the Old Testament to mean a thing was cursed (Deut. 7:26) and therefore should not be touched. In Christian use, the word “anathema” came to mean an idea or opinion or person was outside the broad range of acceptable theological ideas or ethical behavior considered appropriate for Christians. “Arius is anathema” was common after the first ecumenical council at Nicea in AD 325.

Each slogan–Jesus is anathema/Jesus is Lord–is only two words long in Greek: anathema Iesous and kyrios Iesous. Evidently differing factions of the Corinthian parish used these slogans to identify themselves. Why would a Corinthian Christian say, “Jesus is anathema?” Presumably, this was what the Roman authorities wanted the Christians to say when they were arrested and asked to deny Christ. Perhaps some in the Corinthian parish who had gnostic tendencies used the phrase to denigrate the earthly Jesus because they thought “spiritual” experiences were more important; this might explain the hostility between those with certain “spiritual gifts” or “spiritual experiences” and the rest of the parish that St. Paul deals with in other portions of his epistle.

“Jesus is Lord!” was probably a quote from the baptism service in which a new believer affirmed their faith in Christ and was immersed in the water to die and rise with Christ. This affirmation-confession of faith was impossible without the prompting of the Holy Spirit. It has become a quick summary of classic teaching about the Holy Trinity to say that the Father is revealed by the Son and the Son is revealed by the Holy Spirit while the Holy Spirit is revealed by the Church. (Readers might be interested to read Vladimir Lossky’s thoughts on this here or here.)

Shameless self-promotion: However, the Holy Spirit was not always recognized as a distinct person apart from Christ or the Father. For an easy-to-read description of how the Holy Spirit was recognized and the Holy Trinity proclaimed, see Chapter 3 in my introduction to church history, which is also available here.