Blessed Trinity

A Latin hymn from the thirteenth century

Come, thou Holy Spirit, come:

And from thy celestial home send thy light and brilliancy.

Come, thou father of the poor,

Come, who givest all our store,

Come, the soul’s true radiancy.

Come, of comforters the best, of the soul the sweetest guest, sweetly and refreshingly.

Come in labour rest most sweet,

shade and coolness in the heat, comfort in adversity.

Thou who art the light most blest,

come, fulfil their inmost breast, who believe most faithfully.

For without thy Godhead’s dower,

man hath nothing in his power, save to work iniquity.

What is filthy make thou pure, what is wounded work its cure, water what is parched and dry.

Gently bend the stubborn will, warm to life the heart that’s chill, guide who goeth erringly.

Fill thy faithful who adore, and confess thee evermore, with thy seven-fold mystery.

Here thy grace and virtue send,

grant salvation in the end, and in heaven felicity.  Amen.

 

The Holy Spirit is certainly the weak link in the chain of Evangelical theology.  With the stress on Christology, we can miss so much more of the Trinity’s treasure.  Maybe we want to avoid some of the silliness and excesses of Pentecostalism, but boy have we needed much of Pentecostalism to remind us what we’re missing!  Yet tragically, instead of enjoying the fathomless glory of pneumatology (the doctrine of the Holy Spirit), we actually succumb to pneumaphobia!  And that is an evangelical train-wreck waiting to happen.

Another point of note, is that the Holy Spirit is suspect because he does not pander or subscribe to our denominational or theological structures.  Indeed, the Holy Spirit is a free-agent, a maverick.  Jesus did say the wind blows where it will!  He breaks rank, crosses over the other side, He will not be “owned” by us, by anyone; He is as free in Himself as the Son is free in the Father and the Father in the Son.  Blessed Trinity!

He is impossible to outwit, outsmart, predict or predetermine, and will not be bottled and bagged by any church, Christian, denomination, nation or whatever!  He does not bow to any theologian or “school of thought”, and is totally free, going wherever and whenever He wishes.  Mission, evangelism, faithfulness, wisdom, wholeness, true spirituality, life itself, are all to be found in Him.

Too many churches are passionate for the Father’s glory, absolutely determined in their Christ-centered faith (and rightly so), but err big time and languish in a spiritual impoverishment of biblical, cosmic and cataclysmic proportions by neglecting the Holy Spirit.  Remember, it is the role of the Holy Spirit to point us to Jesus, and it is Jesus who shows us the Father.

Read the Latin Hymn again as a prayer.  Pray it.  Come, thou Holy Spirit, come.

Blessed Trinity!