By Emily Mendez, Connecting Creed and Life
“I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.” (cf. CCC 702-730)
When my son was starting to learn to read, I remember pulling up in the parking lot at his school and he looked at the name on the building and asked me why it is pronounced “s-cool” and not “s-ch-ool.” I answered in complete honesty, “I have absolutely no idea.” There is probably a rule for it, but I cannot remember. Maybe I learned it in school or maybe I didn’t.
When we learn to read, our teacher uses a pedagogy — a method or practice of teaching. This may include teaching phonics, sight words, decoding, vowel sounds, memorizing rules, until reading becomes automatic. Learning to read can be really hard and the ability to teach someone to read is so different from just being able to read yourself. Having the right pedagogy, going in the best order with the proper information at the appropriate developmental level makes all the difference in reaching understanding.
Interestingly, we can think about the divine pedagogy — the method that God uses to teach us about himself and his plan for salvation. God reveals himself over time and with greater depth as people are able to understand, culminating in the person of Jesus Christ. The Old Testament gives us a blueprint of the divine pedagogy. This is where our understanding of the Holy Spirit comes in.
We know from Trinitarian theology that the Holy Spirit has always existed, with the Father and the Son. We think of the Holy Spirit coming at Pentecost, but really the Holy Spirit has been an integral part of salvation history from creation. We profess our belief in the Holy Spirit in the Nicene Creed. This includes the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament when “God’s Spirit prepares for the time of the Messiah” (CCC 702). The Catechism uses the word “theophanies” meaning “manifestations of God” to describe the ways God allowed himself to be seen and heard in the Old Testament (CCC 707).
For example, God spoke to Moses in the burning bush, led the Israelites with a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, and spoke on Mt. Sinai, giving the Ten Commandments. These theophanies are how God teaches and reveals over time, in the proper order, and at the depth people can understand, who he is and his plan for salvation. The Catechism says, “Christian tradition has always recognized that God’s Word allowed himself to be seen and heard in these theophanies, in which the cloud of the Holy Spirit both revealed him and concealed him in its shadow” (CCC 707). The Holy Spirit revealed and concealed, according to the divine pedagogy, so that humanity could learn and be prepared to receive the gift of salvation.
From creation up to today, the Holy Spirit has been at work revealing God to humanity and, just like our ancestors of old, we receive the divine revelation recorded in the scriptures and we must keep our hearts and our ears open to how the Holy Spirit wants to teach us and deepen our relationship with God still today. John 16:13 says, “When he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth.” Today, we can ask the Holy Spirit to come and to reveal the truth of who God is, what he has done for us and what he wants us to do. We can ask for a deeper understanding and by doing so, we are faithful students of the divine pedagogy: listening, learning and acting with the Holy Spirit.
Emily Mendez is a stay-at-home mom in Jasper, where she lives with her husband and four sons. She has a master’s degree in Theology. She can be contacted at emilyandpedrom@gmail.com.