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In his second catechesis on the Holy Spirit and the Church, given this June 5, 2024, the Pope considered the name given to the third person of the Trinity in the Bible.
The first thing we know of a person is the name. It is by his name that we address him, that we distinguish him, and remember him. The third Person of the Trinity also has a name: He is called the Holy Spirit. But “Spirit” is the Latinised version. The name of the Spirit, the one by which the first recipients of revelation knew Him, by which the prophets, the psalmists, Mary, Jesus, and the Apostles invoked Him, is Ruach, which means breath, wind, a puff of air.
In the Bible, the name is so important that it is almost identified with the person himself. To sanctify the name of God is to sanctify and honor God Himself. It is never a merely conventional designation: It always says something about the person, his origin, or his mission. This is also the case with the name Ruach. It contains the first fundamental revelation about the Person and function of the Holy Spirit.
The Pope went on to consider what is revealed by this name, noting how at Pentecost the “Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles accompanied by the ‘roar of a rushing wind.’”
“It was as if the Holy Spirit wanted to put his signature on what was happening,” the Pope reflected.
Power
Pope Francis said that the image of wind expresses the Spirit’s power, noting how “Spirit and power” is a recurring combination of words throughout Scripture.
“For the wind is an overwhelming force, an indomitable force, capable even of moving oceans,” the Pope said.
But in the New Testament, Jesus adds something to the concept: “Alongside power, Jesus will highlight another characteristic of the wind: its freedom.”
He tells Nicodemus that the “wind blows where it will.”
The wind “cannot be bridled,” the Pope said. It’s can’t be “bottled up” or “put in a box.”
It is free. To pretend to enclose the Holy Spirit in concepts, definitions, theses or treatises, as modern rationalism has sometimes attempted to do, is to lose it, nullify it, or reduce it to the purely human spirit, to a simple spirit. There is, however, a similar temptation in the ecclesiastical field, and it is that of wanting to enclose the Holy Spirit in canons, institutions, definitions. The Spirit creates and animates institutions, but He himself cannot be “institutionalised,” “objectified”. The wind blows “where it wills,” so the Spirit distributes its gifts “as it wills” (1 Cor 12:11).
St. Paul
Pope Francis noted how St. Paul associated the Spirit with freedom.
A free person, a free Christian, is the one who has the Spirit of the Lord. This is a very special freedom, quite different from what is commonly understood. It is not freedom to do what one wants, but the freedom to freely do what God wants! Not freedom to do good or evil, but freedom to do good and do it freely, that is, by attraction, not compulsion. In other words, the freedom of children, not slaves. […]
This is a freedom that expresses itself in what appears to be its opposite, it is expressed in service, and in service is true freedom.
