Bede Jarrett - The Little Book of the Holy Spirit

Bede Jarrett, O.P.

................................. vii

God's presence within us

.................... 5

. 9

........ 13

................ 17

.. 21

....... 29

...... 33

.. 37

God's loving action within us

.. 43

......... 47

Our presence with God

......... 53

.......... 57

.............. 63

.............. 67

God's gifts within us

......... 73

........ 77

........ 81

.......... 85

..... 89

.................... 93

................. 97

................ 101

................. 105

....... 109

.................. 113

......................... 117

Hardly anything can render us more sensible of our worth and Christian dignity than does the teaching of our Lord on the indwelling of the Spirit of God. The wonderful beauty of this teaching, while it deepens our acquaintance with His mysterious governance of the universe and reveals to us the hidden beauties of our soul's life, should bring also its measure of comfort, for whatever makes us conscious of the intimacy of God's dealing with us lessens life's greatest trouble, its loneliness.

Bede Jarrett, O.P.

Our Lady of Lourdes

New York

February 11, 1918

Now, this notion of God's nearness to His world depends for its full appreciation on the central doctrine of creation. He has made the world; in consequence it is impressed with His personality; the more vigorous the artificer-the more vigorous, that is, in character, will, and personality-the more is his work stamped with his individuality; hence, the tremendous personality of God must be traceable everywhere in the things He has made.

When we say God is everywhere, we mean that He is in all things because He made all things. Not only does the whole world lie outstretched before His eye and is governed by His power, but He Himself lurks at the heart of everything. By Him things have come into existence, and so wholly is that existence of theirs His gift, that were He to withdraw His support, they would sink back into nothingness.

tells how a monk in Spain, pointing to the pictures on the walls of the monastery, which remained while the generations looking at them passed away, judged: "We are the shadows, they the substance." But the relationship established by creation is of a far greater dependence, so that nothing God has made can exist without His support. Out of human acts it is only music that bears some resemblance to this, for when the voice is silent, there is no longer any song.

God, then, is within all creation, because He is its cause. He is within every stone and leaf and child. Nothing, with life or without, evil or good, can fail to contain Him as the source of its energy, its power, and its existence; He is "the soul's soul." Not only, therefore, must I train myself to see with reverence that everything contains Him, but I must especially realize His intimacy and relationship to myself. Religion, indeed, in practice is little else than my personal expression of that relationship.

In my prayers, in my troubles, in my temptations, I have to turn to God, not without but within; not to someone above me or beneath me, supporting me, but right at the core of my being. I can trace up to its source every power of my soul-my intelligence, my will, my love, my anger, and my fear-and I shall find Him there. There is nothing that does not open its doors to Him as innermost in its shrine. Wholly is God everywhere, not as some immense being that with its hugeness fills the world, but as something that is within every creature He has made.

God is intimate with all creation because He made it, for creation implies that God remains withinsupporting, upholding. God is within everything, and therefore He is everywhere. But while we thus believe that God is wholly everywhere, we also believe something which seems the exact opposite, for we believe that God is more in some places than in others, more in some people than in others.

How is it, if God is wholly everywhere, that He can be more here than there? To understand this we must also understand that every created thing shares somehow in God's being. He communicates Himself to it in some fashion, for apart from Him it could have no perfections. We have a way of saying that we reflect God's greatness and that we are "broken lights" of Him. But Not, of course, that there is any community of being, but rather a direct participation.

Now, since everything participates in God and since some things are more excellent than others, it stands to reason that some things express God better than others. The eyes of a dog often are pitiful to see, because we can note its evident desire and yet its impossibility to express its feelings. To seeing minds the whole of nature has the same pitifulness. It is always endeavoring to express God, the inexpressible.

Yet the higher a thing is in the scale of being, the more of God it expresses, for it participates more in God's being. The more life a thing has and the more freedom it acquires, the nearer does it approach God and the more divinity it holds. Man, by his intelligence, his deeper and richer life, and his finer freedom, stands at the head of visible creation and, in consequence, is more fully a shrine of God than are lower forms of life. He bears a closer resemblance to the divine intelligence and will and has a greater share in them. It is, then, in that sense that we arrange in ascending order inanimate creation, the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom, and man.

Consequently we can now see in what sense God is said to be more in one thing than in another. He is more in it because He exercises Himself more in one thing than in another; one thing expresses more than another the perfections of God because it shares more deeply than another that inner being of God. The more nearly anything or anyone is united to God, the more does His power exercise itself in them. Since God's gifts are variously distributed and are of various degrees, we are justified in saying that although He is wholly everywhere, He may be more fully here than there; just as, although my soul is in every part of my being, it is more perfectly in the brain than elsewhere, because there it exercises itself more fully and with more evidence of expression. Thus we say God is more in a man's soul than anywhere else in creation, since in a man's soul God is more perfectly expressed. It is therefore with great reverence that I should regard all creation, but with especial reverence that I should look to the dignity of every human soul.