June 4, 2025

Fr. John Riccardo

By God’s grace somewhere along the line I fell in love with reading. This became especially true once I went to seminary and has remained the case ever since. There’s a part of me that’s afraid I would run out of things to say if I didn’t read. Great authors, especially great spiritual authors, can have a major impact not just on the formation of our minds but can truly help us enter more deeply into prayer.

Fr. Wilfrid Stinissen is one of those authors. Some people are perhaps aware of his wonderful little book called Into Your Hands, Father, a rich commentary on “The Prayer of Abandonment.” Stinissen has another, less known book, entitled The Holy Spirit, Fire of Divine Love. As we prepare this weekend for the great solemnity of Pentecost, I have found myself re-reading this spiritual gem. There is one excerpt in particular that is simply too good to keep to myself; I pray others will find the following as helpful and encouraging as I do.

“The Spirit comforts in different ways. He comforts by giving a certain taste for poverty. He teaches you to love your littleness. If you try to take the Gospel seriously, you will sooner or later come to a point where you stand face to face with your own poverty. You discover that there is more darkness in you than you realized, more evil than you imagined. You feel incapable of living up to the Gospel's high demands. You experience that you cannot produce any willpower, that your resources are not enough.

“In this feeling of desperation that arises, and which is a fruit of the Holy Spirit's work in you, it is the same Spirit who comforts you. He does not comfort primarily by making you strong. Many go around with the illusion that if they give their weakness to God, he will transform it into strength. But God knows man well enough to see that he cannot bear such strength immediately. He would only become more puffed up.

“Jesus did not seek to rid himself of his weakness. On the contrary, he wanted his weakness to be made known. He was filled with anguish in Gethsemane; he fell under the Cross; he ‘offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death’ (Heb 5:7). But in the midst of his sufferings the Father's power was at work in him. ‘For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we are weak in him, but in dealing with you we shall live by the power of God’ (2 Cor 13:4).

“The one who refuses to be weak does not receive God's power, either. ‘For my power is made perfect in weakness. I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me’ (2 Cor 12:9).

“Instead of making you strong, the Spirit teaches you to accept and even love your poverty. ‘The poorer you are, the more Jesus will love you’, writes Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897) to her sister Celine. There is an indescribable joy in being incapable of doing anything oneself and, instead, being completely dependent on God.

“If you wish to know if you understand anything of the Gospel message, you have only to see how you react when you discover your wretchedness. Does it make you feel happy and encouraged, or do you become sad and discouraged?

“It is the Spirit, the Comforter, who leads you to realize that this very poverty is your true wealth, that it gives you ‘power’ over God. God cannot resist a person who is aware of his poverty and stretches out his arms to him. It is the Spirit who makes you understand that you are blessed when you are poor (Mt 5:3).

“'Take away temptations," says one Desert Father, ‘and no one will be saved.’ It is above all in temptations that we experience our weakness. It often takes a long time before we dare to admit and accept this. The Spirit helps and consoles by teaching us that it is this poverty which is the treasure buried in our field. He comforts everyone who has a weak will and teaches him that this very weakness opens the door to God.

"’We must take the right train’, writes Jean Lafrance: ‘The train of willpower and sacrifice … is beautiful and fascinating. It departs when it wills —immediately. Unfortunately, it never arrives. The train of the Holy Spirit is poor and miserable. It has difficulty getting started, but it is the only one that reaches the goal, the kingdom of heaven.’

“You may think, perhaps, that despite everything, the poverty of Jesus, Saint Paul, and Saint Thérèse was a beautiful poverty. Someone comes to me and says: ‘All that you preach about poverty, trust, and confidence is encouraging, but my poverty is real poverty, it is sin, misery, cowardice, and pride.’ And I answer: ‘If you have real misery, then you have a right to real misericordia’ (mercy) .

“What God wants from you is humility, not perfection.”

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