God, the Holy Spirit:
Top Quotes
- “When the Spirit of truth comes he will lead you to the complete truth.” (Jesus)
- “What the Spirit brings is very different: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control….. You cannot belong to Christ Jesus unless you crucify all self-indulgent passions and desires. Since the Spirit is our life, let us be directed by the Spirit.” (St Paul)
- “Only the Holy Spirit is capable of breaking that hardness of heart and making it docile towards the Lord. Docile when it comes to the freedom to love.” (Pope Francis)
- “As a man Jesus was confined to Israel. As the Holy Spirit he’s like the wind — can touch everyone.” (Fr Peter Cryan, OCD)
- “Fan into a flame the gift of God that you possess.” (St Paul)
- “Who is this Holy Spirit? He is God himself. The Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. He is sent to each of us by the Father and the Son. He is their greatest gift and he remains constantly with us. He abides in us.” (Pope John-Paul II)
- “We should turn to the Holy Spirit instinctively in all our needs and ask him for his guidance and help… As Saint Paul says so beautifully: “The Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness. For when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words” (Rom 8:26). What more could God do for us? What more can we expect of God than that?” (Pope John-Paul II)
- “The Holy Spirit… has given us the opportunity and the duty to offer the best of ourselves.” (Pope Francis)
- “Let us never yield to pessimism, to that bitterness that the devil offers us every day; let us not yield to pessimism or discouragement: let us be quite certain that the Holy Spirit bestows upon the Church, with his powerful breath, the courage to persevere.” (Pope Francis)
- In difficult times, where we have to choose the right path, where we have to say ‘no’ to a lot of things that maybe try to seduce us, there is prayer to the Holy Spirit, and He makes us strong enough to take this path of witness.” (Pope Francis)
God, the Holy Spirit:
Full Quotes and Sources of Quotes
“I still have many things to say to you but they would be too much for you now.
But when the Spirit of truth comes he will lead you to the complete truth.”
— Jesus, as recorded in John’s Gospel (John 16:12-13; Jerusalem Bible translation)
“When Pentecost day came round, they had all met in one room, when suddenly they heard what sounded like a powerful wind from heaven, the noise of which filled the entire house in which they were sitting; and something appeared to them that seemed like tongues of fire; these separated and came to rest on the head of each of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak foreign languages as the Spirit gave them the gift of speech.”
— From the Book of Acts, Chapter 2, verses 1 to 4 (Acts 2:1-4), commonly understood to have been written by Luke (Jerusalem Bible translation)
“If you are guided by the Spirit you will be in no danger of yielding to self-indulgence, since self-indulgence is the opposite of the Spirit.
…. When self-indulgence is at work the results are obvious: fornication, gross indecency and sexual irresponsibility; idolatry and sorcery; feuds and wrangling, jealousy, bad temper and quarrels; disagreements, factions, envy; drunkenness, orgies and similar things. I warn you now, as I warned you before: those who behave like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
What the Spirit brings is very different: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control.
…. You cannot belong to Christ Jesus unless you crucify all self-indulgent passions and desires. Since the Spirit is our life, let us be directed by the Spirit.”
— St Paul in his letter to the Galatians (5: 16-25), naming the nine ‘fruits’ of being guided by the Holy Spirit (Jerusalem Bible translation)
“You can follow thousands of catechism courses, thousands of spirituality courses, thousands of yoga or zen courses and all these things. But none of this will be able to give you the freedom as a child (of God).
Only the Holy Spirit can prompt your heart to say ‘Father.’ Only the Holy Spirit is capable of banishing, of breaking that hardness of heart and making it… soft? No, I don’t like that word,… ‘docile’. Docile towards the Lord. Docile when it comes to the freedom to love.”
— Pope Francis in his homily during his Morning Mass as translated by Vatican Radio on Rome Reports website, the 9th January 2015
Great thoughts to ponder from a sermon on the Holy Spirit…
- “As a man Jesus was confined to Israel. As the Holy Spirit he’s like the wind — can touch everyone.”
- “Our bodies, as Scripture tells us, are temples of God. God is in us! If that doesn’t cheer us up, I don’t know what will!”
- “Just to name the gifts of the Holy Spirit make you feel good… So I will! … It’s up to us to project these gifts. Let others be drawn to us so we can draw them to Christ.”
- “The disciples were all fearful, closed in the room. Then comes the Holy Spirit. Then they are changed utterly and they went out and preached the Gospel as Jesus had told them to do.”
- “The early Church always invoked the Holy Spirit before doing anything.”
— Fr Peter Cryan, OCD, a Carmelite priest in St. Joseph’s Church, Berkeley Road, Dublin, Pentecost Sunday, 12 June 2011
“That is why I am reminding you now to fan into a flame the gift of God that you possess through the laying on of my hands. The Spirit God has given us is no cowardly Spirit but rather One that makes us strong, loving, and wise.”
— St Paul in his second letter to Timothy (1: 5-7)
“Dear young people of Scotland!…. Who is this Holy Spirit? He is God himself. The Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. He is sent to each of us by the Father and the Son. He is their greatest gift and he remains constantly with us. He abides in us.
The clearest description of the work of the Holy Spirit has been given by Saint Paul, who said that the Spirit produces “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal 5:22). Qualities such as these are ideal in every walk of life and in all circumstances….
The prophet Isaiah also attributed special gifts to the Holy Spirit: “a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and fortitude, a spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord” (Is 11:2). Saint Paul is right in saying: “Since the Spirit is our life, let us be directed by the Spirit” (Gal 5:25)
With gifts and qualities such as these we are equal to any task and capable of overcoming any difficulties. Yet our lives remain our own, and the Spirit acts on each of us differently, in harmony with our own individual personality and the characteristics we have inherited from our parents and from the upbringing received in our homes.
Because he is so near to us, yet so unobtrusive, we should turn to the Holy Spirit instinctively in all our needs and ask him for his guidance and help. God has sent him to us because of our helplessness, as Saint Paul says so beautifully: “The Spirit too comes to help us in our weakness. For when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words” (Rom 8:26). What more could God do for us? What more can we expect of God than that?
If the Holy Spirit were to be withdrawn then we would immediately notice the difference. Saint Paul tell us what happens when we refuse to be guided by the Spirit: “when self-indulgence is at work the results are obvious: fornication, gross indecency and sexual irresponsibility… feuds and wrangling, jealousy, bad temper and quarrels; disagreements, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and similar things. I warn you now, as I warned you before: those who behave like this will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal 5:19-21).”
— Pope John Paul II (“To the Young People of Scotland”), At Murrayfield, Edinburgh , 31st May, 1982, as published on page 84 and 85 of “The Pope in Britain: Collected Homilies & Speeches” St Paul Publications, 1982
“The Holy Spirit… has summoned us, invited us, given us the opportunity and the duty to offer the best of ourselves.
The Spirit does not abandon us. He becomes one with us, so that we can encounter paths of new life.
May he, the Spirit, always be our teacher and our companion along the way.”
— Pope Francis on 7 July 2015 in his concluding Address at a Meeting with Educators at the Catholic University of Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador, as reported by Vatican Radio
“Asked in 1997 if he believed the pope was directly selected by the Holy Spirit, he commented: “I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the pope… I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves as much space, as much freedom, without entirely abandoning us… Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined!”
— Breda O’Brien quoting the then Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) in a column in the Irish Times the week Pope Benedict resigned as pope in February 2013
“There is a variety of gifts but always the same Spirit; there are all sorts of service to be done, but always to the same Lord; working in all sorts of different ways in different people, it is the same God who is working in all of them.
The particular way in which the Spirit is given to each person is for a good purpose. One may have the gift of preaching with wisdom given him by the same Spirit; another may have the gift of preaching instruction given him by the same Spirit; another again the gift of healing, through this one Spirit; one the power of miracles; another prophecy; another the gift of recognising spirits; another the gift of tongues and another the ability to interpret them.
All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, who distributes different gifts to different people just as he chooses.”
— St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 12:4-11)
“As Pope Benedict XVI reminded us so many times in his teachings, and at the end by his courageous and humble gesture, it is Christ who leads the Church through his Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church through his life-giving and unifying force: out of many, he makes one single body, the Mystical Body of Christ.
Let us never yield to pessimism, to that bitterness that the devil offers us every day; let us not yield to pessimism or discouragement: let us be quite certain that the Holy Spirit bestows upon the Church, with his powerful breath, the courage to persevere and also to seek new methods of evangelization, so as to bring to Gospel to the uttermost ends of the earth (cf. Acts 1:8).”
— Pope Francis I in the first few days of his papacy in his goodbye talk with the cardinals, 15th March 2013
“We cannot bear witness without the presence of the Holy Spirit in us…. In difficult times, where we have to choose the right path, where we have to say ‘no’ to a lot of things that maybe try to seduce us, there is prayer to the Holy Spirit, and He makes us strong enough to take this path of witness.
Today thinking about these two icons — Stephen, who dies, and the people, the Christians, fleeing, scattering far and wide because of the violent persecution – let us ask: How is my witness? Am I a Christian who witnesses to Jesus or am I a simple numerary in this sect? Am I fruitful because I bear witness, or sterile because I am unable to let the Holy Spirit lead me forward in my Christian vocation?”
— Pope Francis, part of his homily at a morning Mass (6th May 2014) at Casa Santa Marta as reported by Vatican Radio and published on indcatholicnews.com
“Your interests are not in the unspiritual, but in the spiritual, since the Spirit of God has made his home in you.”
— St Paul in his letter to the Romans (8:9), Jerusalem Bible translation
help with the tough questions 