Every time I glance through the pages of Bernard Cooke’s “Power and the Spirit of God: Toward an Experience-Based Pneumatology” (Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 209), I find some topic, question or insight that I wish to share with readers of this column. 

There is a story told about St. Theresa of Avila, the great Christian mystic, that has always interested me though I am not sure if the story is apocryphal or is reporting a conversation that actually happened. Supposedly someone asked St. Theresa if she had to choose a spiritual director who was holy or one who was intelligent, which one would she choose. St. Theresa is reported to have responded that she would choose the one who was intelligent because it was more likely that through his intelligence he would safely guide her. 

As I was recently thinking about that story, I recalled the ending of the film “The Razor’s Edge” which starred Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney and Herbert Marshall. Though not a great film, it has an interesting plot about an idealistic young man, played by Tyrone Power, searching to find a meaningful life. At the end of the film he has decided to be a taxi driver. The Gene Tierney character, who is in love with him, thinks that this will be a great waste of intelligence and talent and she conveys this opinion to the Somerset Maugham character, played by Herbert Marshall. Maugham offers a different response to the young man’s decision. I recall that he says something like the following: “’Living an unselfish life is as difficult to do as walking on a razor’s edge. Ultimately the greatest force in the world is goodness and he’s got it.” I suspect many people would agree that there is some special power to goodness. 

Reflecting on the power of an embrace, Cooke wrote the following: 

“A true human embrace says to another that she or he are truly valued for who they are rather than for what they are or possess. If the human embrace conveys this kind of dignity to a person, the divine embrace is an ultimate founding for this fundamental human importance. Embraced by the Spirit, one has the authority of a friend of God. 

“Moreover, a person responding in openness to the divine embrace has a unique kind of authority in the area of knowledge. The authority to teach comes with possession of knowledge; one can teach with authority in proportion as one knows that about which one speaks and not just what has been said about the reality…At the heart of the mystery of divine loving of humans is that a person enjoying this religious experience does not simply know about God, one knows God. Mystics over the centuries have referred to this as ‘the knowledge of the heart,’ a knowing that is not confined to those with extraordinary mystical gifts but to some extent belongs to all with faith” (pp. 187-188). 

The last few words indicating that perhaps many people have mystical experiences even if they do not have extraordinary mystical gifts especially interest me. Also I think that Cooke’s statement that knowledge of the heart belongs to some extent to all those who have faith is very important. I have come to suspect that people who take their religious faith seriously and pray regularly may have special, intimate experiences of God even though they might not identify those experiences as mystical experiences. Of course there is no way that I can support my suspicion with a proof. Still I imagine that mystical experiences, intimate experiences of the Holy Spirit’s presence, may be happening more frequently than many of us have thought in the past. 

I like very much what Cooke has written about the special power that a good person may have in presenting or bearing witness to the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection. We should be encouraged, even inspired, by the belief that the presence of the Holy Spirit is offered not only to Catholics but to everyone. Also our belief that the Holy Spirit is not limited to activities that we usually identify as “religious” should encourage us. Wherever people are living morally and unselfishly, that is due to the Holy Spirit influencing people’s freedom. We can choose to focus our attention on all the evil we observe in the contemporary world. To deny the presence of the enormous evil in the world is to close ourselves off from reality. But evil is not the final word to sum up the world. A more profound truth about the contemporary world is that the Holy Spirit is everywhere challenging people to overcome evil. The most profound view of the world is to view the world with the vision that faith provides.