Someone once said that the law of gravity and the law of love ultimately have the same source and are both driven by the same spirit, the Holy Spirit. Is this true? Yes. At least if the Scriptures are to be believed. They tell us that the Holy Spirit is both a physical and a spiritual force, the source of all creativity and all morality all at the same time.
Ron Rolheiser, OMI
ONE SPIRIT – ONE SOURCE OF ALL
We first meet the person of the Holy Spirit in the opening line of the bible: “In the beginning there was a formless void and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters … ” In the early chapters of the scripture, the Holy Spirit is presented as a physical force, a wind that comes from the very mouth of God and not only shapes and orders physical creation but is in fact the energy the lies at the base of everything, animate and inanimate alike: “Take away our breath, and everything returns to dust.”
The ancients believed that there was a soul in everything and that soul, which was God’s breath, held everything together and gave it meaning. They could not explain these things scientifically the way we can, but they recognized, just as we do, that there is already some form of love inside all things, however inanimate. They attributed all of this to God’s breath, the wind that comes from God’s mouth and ultimately animates rocks, water, animals, and human beings.
They also understood that this same breath that animates and orders physical creation is also the source of all wisdom, harmony, peace, creativity, morality, and fidelity. God’s breath was understood to be as moral as it is physical, as harmonious as it is creative, and as wise as it is fertile. For them, the breath of God was one force and it did not contradict itself. The physical and the spiritual world were not set against each other. One spirit was understood to be the source of both. We need to understand things in that same way. We need to let the Holy Spirit, in all his and her fullness, animate our lives. What this means concretely is that we must not let ourselves be energized and driven too much by one part of the Spirit to the detriment of other parts of that same Spirit.
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