“Note that fire has four natures.It burns, it cleanses, it warms, it gives light.Similarly, the Holy Spirit, burns away sins, cleanses hearts, shakes off sloth, and enlightens ignorance.” (Saint Anthony of Padua).
I have been thinking about fire.
Now that the weather is cold, it is only natural to want to curl up in front of a warm and cosy fire. While we do not have a fireplace in our home, my husband – who grew up overseas where the temperatures in winter fall well below zero degrees Celsius – grew up with a fireplace around which the family sat of an evening.
My mother-in-law tells me the stories of how the family not only sat around the fire for warmth, but also roasted their chestnuts over the fire and snacked on them. But here was more to the fire than that. During the winter and back in those days, electricity was scarce and electrical appliances were almost non-existent in that part of the world for people of the socio-economic position of my husband’s family. And that meant that there was no electric washing machine or dryer. And so, my mother-in-law would spend the long winter months drying the family’s washing in front of the fire each evening.
And so it was that the fire served many functions in husband’s family. It warmed them. It entertained them. It fed them. And it clothed them.
And I have been thinking about fire and the nature of fire – and it seems that I am not the only one… Saint Anthony of Padua said, “Note that fire has four natures. It burns, it cleanses, it warms, it gives light. Similarly, the Holy Spirit, burns away sins, cleanses hearts, shakes off sloth, and enlightens ignorance.”
And I have been reflecting on the Holy Spirit. When Christ ascended into Heaven after His Resurrection, which is an event that we commemorate in the second Glorious Mystery of the Most Holy Rosary, He ascended so that His Living Holy Spirit could descend and be with His Church.
And that is a significant thing. From the perspective of the apostles, it would have been a terrible thing to accept that their Beloved Teacher (God Himself) was physically leaving them just as everything became even more difficult than it had ever been. And yet – through Grace – they accepted (even if they could not understand) the significance of what God allowed. Imagine the faith that they had to go on, knowing that Christ had left them and replaced Himself with an invisible Person of the Most Holy Trinity…
That is the sort of faith that a mother has when she knows that he child has died and gone to heaven before her and still believes that though her child’s physical body is decaying in the earth her child’s soul is triumphing in eternal glory… It is that belief that this physical shell is only a small part of our existence and that there are things beyond our senses that we shall never truly understand.
And I have been thinking about a faith like that, as I think about fire today. For it seems that the Holy Spirit does a great many things that I shall never understand but which are entirely according to the Holy Will of God and therefore entirely for my own good.
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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