Charles Williams : The New Christian Year

Whitsun-Week Thursday (May 31st, 2007)

When a man here on earth is illuminated by the Holy Spirit from the spring of Jesus Christ . . . there comes into his heart and his veins such joy that the whole body triumphs, as though it were in the Holy Trinity, which they alone understand who have been its guests.

Jakob Boehme: Aurora.

Whitsun-Week Wednesday (May 30th, 2007)

The grace of the Holy Ghost is not bound to any law.

St. Gregory the Great: Dialogues.

Nature makes man from the child and the hen from the egg, but God makes the man before the child and the hen before the egg.  God gives the Holy Ghost before he gives the gifts of the Holy Ghost.

Eckhart: The Book of Benedictus.

Whitsun-Week Tuesday (May 29th, 2007)

God begins in the soul, his Word, and the soul conceiving it passes it on to her powers in varied guise, now as desire, now as good intent, now as charity, now as gratitude, or as it may take thee: It is his, not thine at all.  What is thus wrought by God take thou as his and not thine own, as it is written, "The Holy Ghost asketh in us with unutterable yearnings."  He prays in us, not we ourselves.  St. Paul says, "No one is able to say, Lord Jesus Christ, except in the Holy Ghost."

Eckhart: Sermons and Collations.

Whitsun-Week Monday (May 28th, 2007)

Neither is that city, the heavenly Jerusalem, watered by the channel of any earthly river, but that Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Fount of Life, with but a short drought of Whom we are satiated, seems to flow more abundantly among those celestial Thrones, Dominions, and Powers, Angels and Archangels, rushing in the full course of the seven virtues of the Spirit.  For if a river rising above its banks overflows, how much more does the Spirit, rising above every creature, when He touches the as it were low-lying fields of our minds, makes glad that heavenly nature of the creatures with the larger fertility of His sanctification.

St. Ambrose: On the Holy Spirit.

The Father was pleased to breathe into his body [of man] in the creation; the Son was pleased to assume this body in the redemption; the Holy Ghost is pleased to consecrate this body by his sanctification.  The consultation of the whole Trinity is exercised upon the dignifying of man's body.

John Donne: Sermons.

Whit-Sunday; Day of Pentecost (May 27th, 2007)

Unity is in the Father, equality in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost is the concord of equality and unity.

St. Augustine: On Christian Doctrine.

The Holy Ghost is He whereby the Begotten is loved by the One begetting and love His Begetter.

St. Augustine: On the Trinity.

He loves Himself and every creature by the Holy Ghost, inasmuch as the Holy Ghost proceeds as the love of the primal goodness whereby the Father loves Himself and every creature.

Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica.

A gift is properly an unreturnable giving . . . hence it is manifest that love has the nature of a first gift, through which all free gifts are given.  So since the Holy Ghost proceeds as Love, He proceeds as the first gift.  Gift . . . is the proper name of the Holy Ghost.

Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica.