A Portrait Of The Holy Spirit

This book considers the presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit as he transforms the cracked canvases of our lives into becoming living portraits of grace. Jesus did this with his disciples while he was here on earth and his Spirit continues to do this now that Jesus has ascended to heaven. Once we realize just how committed God is to paint grace in our lives we discover fresh hope. We may have thought that we would have to figure out the Christian life on our own. But now we discover that God has never left us alone at all. In fact his Spirit's work in us has guaranteed that the portrait he is painting will reflect his presence forever! We also realize that there are countless others who have also been called to be part of God's living portrait. He is painting in all nations on the earth and one day believers will join the hosts of heaven who have cheered us on since God first took up his brush to paint in our lives.

We recognize the challenges churches face in engaging high school teens in deeper faith formation. Made up of 5 4-week studies, Canvas will captivate your students as they experience and explore the theological beliefs and foundational concepts that ground their faith. By working together to learn from history, tradition, and the Bible, students will uncover a portrait of God that will be an inspirational foundation to their own journey. This undated resource is designed to empower students to lead the lessons themselves, thus drawing students to not only learn about their faith, but put it into practice by serving and teaching others. Flexible to use as a continuation of confirmation, a small group resource, or student leadership resource. Canvas will inspire your students to paint the picture of their faith. The Holy Spirit is often one of the least discussed aspects of the Christian life. Sometimes the Spirit has been misunderstood, and at other times the work of the Spirit can be confusing or so quiet that it feels imperceptible. In Canvas: Holy Spirit, students will begin to understand the important role that the Holy Spirit plays in the Christian life every day. In this four-week study, they will examine the coming of the Spirit in Acts, discuss the ways the Church has experienced and talked about the Spirit throughout the centuries, and reflect on the experience of the Spirit that they have had in their own lives. They will also learn about how the Spirit invites us to work alongside God for the restoration of the world.

We recognize the challenges churches face in engaging high school teens in deeper faith formation. Made up of 5 4-week studies, Canvas will captivate your students as they experience and explore the theological beliefs and foundational concepts that ground their faith. By working together to learn from history, tradition, and the Bible, students will uncover a portrait of God that will be an inspirational foundation to their own journey. This undated resource is designed to empower students to lead the lessons themselves, thus drawing students to not only learn about their faith, but put it into practice by serving and teaching others. Flexible to use as a continuation of confirmation, a small group resource, or student leadership resource. Canvas will inspire your students to paint the picture of their faith. The Holy Spirit is often one of the least discussed aspects of the Christian life. Sometimes the Spirit has been misunderstood, and at other times the work of the Spirit can be confusing or so quiet that it feels imperceptible. In Canvas: Holy Spirit, students will begin to understand the important role that the Holy Spirit plays in the Christian life every day. In this four-week study, they will examine the coming of the Spirit in Acts, discuss the ways the Church has experienced and talked about the Spirit throughout the centuries, and reflect on the experience of the Spirit that they have had in their own lives. They will also learn about how the Spirit invites us to work alongside God for the restoration of the world.

The Holy Spirit and Moral Action in Thomas Aquinas is a detailed study of how, according to one of Christianity’s greatest visionary thinkers, God’s Holy Spirit is continuously at work in and through humanity’s moral activity. Jack Mahoney, SJ, documents, notably from Aquinas’s commentaries on scripture, how “the grace of the Holy Spirit” prompts and influences people’s minds, as well as their decisions to act, occasionally in unexpected ways. Through the gift of connatural wisdom, the Spirit empowers humans to appreciate God’s own wise and loving design for the whole of creation, and enables them to cooperate freely in fulfilling their unique part in it.

The Holy Spirit: Medieval Roman Catholic and Reformation Traditions (Sixth-Sixteenth Centuries) is the third in a series of three volumes devoted to the history of Christian pneumatology. In the first volume, The Holy Spirit: Ancient Christian Traditions (formerly titled The Spirit and the Church: Antiquity), Stanley M. Burgess detailed Christian efforts from the end of the first century to the end of the fifth century A.D. to understand the divine Third Person. Volume 1 explored the tensions between the developing institutional order and various prophetic elements in the Church. The second volume, The Holy Spirit: Eastern Christian Traditions, brought together a wealth of material on the Spirit from Eastern Christian traditions, a rich heritage often overlooked in Western Christianity. By exploring the various ways in which Eastern theologians understood the Third Person of the Trinity, volume 2 showed how modern Christians can gain a wider vision and fuller understanding of the workings of the Holy Spirit in history and in our own generation. This concluding volume examines medieval Roman Catholic and Reformation attitudes toward the Holy Spirit beginning with the writings of medieval Catholic theologians from Gregory the Great and Bede to Aquinas and Bonaventure. Subsequent sections describe the contributions of influential women such Hildegard of Bingen, Birgitta of Sweden, and Catherine of Siena; "fringe" figures such as Joachim of Fiore and the Cathars; the magisterial reformers Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin; leading Catholic reformers such as Ignatius of Loyola; and the "radical reformers" Thomas Muntzer and Menno Simons.

Acclaimed spiritual writer Fr. Wilfrid Stinissen presents insightful reflections on the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Holy Trinity, emphasizing the importance of the Spirit in the life of a Christian. He illustrates that the Holy Spirit desires to live in us so that we can love God and others with God's own love. As the Holy Spirit descended upon the early Church at Pentecost to set the world ablaze with the fire of divine love, so He wants to do with us. God, who is One, also desires the Church to be one, Fr. Stinissen writes. The Lord wants to unify all Christians in one holy Church, and all people in one body. The Holy Spirit is the great unifier, he says, for it is he who makes the Father and the Son one God. If Christians let him live within them, they will grow in unity.