• Mood: contemplative

the third Person of the Trinity

"34. Just as we said that contemplation takes two forms, descending and ascending, so too with the affection of love. In the scholastic path [mentioned above], the affectus ascends from [love for] the lower creatures to the affectus of love, but in mystical wisdom the opposite is true: for this true love, which is the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity and the last as far as the origin of Persons is concerned, is closer to us and is the point of departure for the affective upsurge to God. The Holy Spirit himself touches the soul's supreme affective apex with the fire of love and sets it ablaze, drawing it toward himself wordlessly, without any cogitation or rational running hither and yon. Just as a stone pulled by its own weight is naturally drawn down to its own center, so the apex of the affectus by its own weight is carried up to God directly and unmediatedly, without any oblique tengentiality, without any cogitation leading the way or keeping it company.

35. Hence Denis says that this force in the soul is directly moved by the touch of the Holy Spirit and it is according to this touch that all of On Mystical Theology proceeds. "Now there is a law predefined by us, teaching us to assert the truth of God's Words, not in persuasive words of human reason, but in the power by which the Holy Spirit inspired the writers of Scripture according to which we are inexpressibly and unknowingly united to inexpressible and unknown things, according to the better power of our understanding and the operative union." By this motive power of the Holy Spirit comes a much greater and direct knowledge of God than is possible through any sort of investigating intellect or reason." pg. 165 Hugh of Balma