The Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas - El Camino ...

410 Missions
possesses in its fullness. As God and man, Christ is the Author of sanctiWcation,
the ‘principle of all grace’.227
The Holy Spirit is the One who, in keeping with his personal property as
Love and Gift, brings the sanctiWcation to achievement within us. When
Thomas speaks of ‘indicators’ or signs in relation to the Holy Spirit, he
does not mean to say that the Holy Spirit or his sanctifying acts are the
signs in question. The indicator (indicium) is the Wre or dove which shows
that the Spirit acts, right here, the Holy Spirit sanctifying. The visible mission
of the Holy Spirit is thus ordered to the sanctiWcation of human beings, but it
is realized in a diVerent way to the Son’s sanctifying mission. The Holy Spirit
internalizes the life of grace in us, bringing about sanctiWcation and the divine
indwelling. He himself is what the Son communicates to human beings in
the mysteries of his Xesh. In other words, the Holy Spirit is not the Giver
but the Gift himself, spread in human hearts. And so the visible indicators of
the Holy Spirit do not display him as the Giver but as the sanctifying Gift: the
Holy Spirit is present as the ‘indicated is in the indicating’.228
St Thomas adds a few concrete touches to this teaching by looking at the
various ‘visible missions’ of the Spirit. These visible missions are simply
the making manifest of the Spirit’s invisible mission, his sanctifying gift,
and they are all bound to the establishment of the Church. A very beautiful
passage in the Sentence commentary gives a brief synthesis of the doctrine of
missions which explains this:
In the invisible mission of the Holy Spirit, the fullness of the divine love is poured out
in the soul through grace and, as an eVect of this grace, the recipient of the mission is
given an experiential knowledge of the divine person. And likewise, in the visible
mission, his ‘overXow’ rises to a new level: because of its plenitude the interior grace
overXows into a visible disclosure which reveals the indwelling of the divine persons
beyond the one who receives it to others. So two things are requisite to a visible
mission: it is necessary that there be a plenitude of grace in the recipients of the
mission, and that this plenitude be ordered to others, so that this abounding grace
overXows in some way onto others. So the interior grace is not only manifest to the
one who possesses it, but also to others. And this is why the visible mission came Wrst
to Christ and then to the Apostles, because it is through them that grace has been
spread to many other human beings; it was through them that the Church was
planted.229
A visible mission consists in two kinds of outpouring. (1) The pouring out of
the eternal procession of the person (his personal property) in the gifts
of grace which bring about the indwelling of the person and the experience
227 De veritate, q. 29, a. 5. 228 ST I, q. 43, a. 7, ad 5.
229 I Sent. d. 16, q. 1, a. 2; cf. ST I, q. 43, a. 7, ad 6.