Peter Hannan on the Holy Spirit

Since he returned from the Zambian mission, Peter Hannan SJ has been living a special sort of life in Manresa, rising in the very small hours, studying, writing and praying until the dawn, gardening in the grounds of Manresa, and working steadily at his books. His latest is called A World Alight with Splendour and is about the Holy Spirit. Peter is concerned to dispel the notion that the Spirit is the most unreal, mysterious and remote of the three persons of the Trinity. Read more This book is about the Holy Spirit. Where we might believe that the Spirit is the most unreal, mysterious and remote of the three persons of the Trinity, this book contends that the Spirit is deeply involved in our human experience in a most intimate and practical way. To understand how this is so, we will look at how the Spirit is involved in our lives in the context of the desire of the Trinity to reveal how passionately they love us. The Spirit’s role in this is twofold: to give us the ability to receive this love, and then to lead us step by step into an intimate knowledge of it. We can appreciate how practical as well as intimate is the Spirit’s involvement in our lives from an experience we are all familiar with. This is the effect that the love of our family and friends has on us. In spite of all its deficiencies the quiet attraction of this love can lead us into an intimacy and a joy in which we glimpse our deepest dream. It is into the fullness of this dream that the Spirit wishes to lead us.