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Dear Father Bellon,

Recently, a friend and I argued about Spirit and the concept of double breathing (active and passive).

He said that processions give rise to two equal and opposite relationships, like in the principle of action and reaction, whereby the relationship between active and passive spiration is something like paternity and filiation.

The active love of the Father and the Son has its counterpart in the passive love of the Holy Spirit.

Instead, I thought that active spiration was above all the work of the Father and that passive spiration came from the Son Who is in communion with the Father.

I have always thought that the active breathing was the active love of the Father for humanity and, obviously, for the Son Who is the firstfruit, while the passive love comes from the beloved, the Son Himself in whom He is pleased and whom we ought to follow.

Accordingly, the love, active the former and passive the latter, would be the Holy Spirit.

I would like to better understand hoping I did not say heresies.

Thanks for your time.


The Priest’s answer

Dear friend,

1. Your friend is right.

The Father’s and Son’s breathing is the active one.

The passive breathing is the Holy Spirit, Who proceeds from them.

2. From the Latin Spiritus, which means breath, wind, we speak of spiratio, which is translated as breathing.

Love is something like a breath: it proceeds from a subject and it moves and conveys towards another subject.

St. Thomas says that to push and move the will towards the loved object is proper to love (rf. Summa Theologiae, I;36;1).

And, that is why he adds that the third divine Person is rightly named Spirit.

It is named Holy because: “the love whereby the supreme good that is God is loved must possess the supereminent goodness that goes by the name of holiness”, and “Rightly, then, the Spirit, who represents to us the love whereby God loves himself, is called the Holy Spirit. For this reason the rule of Catholic faith names the Spirit ‘Holy’” (Compendium Theologiae, 47).

3. The Holy Spirit is the love which God loves himself by.

He loves Himself knowing Himself.

That is why the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

St. Thomas writes: “as he understands himself, must likewise love himself” (Compendium Theologiae, 45).

4. Thus, there are two emitting persons, who together form a single emitting principle, which only one breathing proceeds from. And, consequently, that breathing has only one term: the Holy Spirit.

5. In 1274, May 18th, the Council of Lyons affirmed in a session: “In faithful and devout profession we declare that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, not as from two beginnings, but from one beginning, not from two breathings but from one breathing. The most holy Roman Church, the mother and teacher of all the faithful, has up to this time professed, preached, and taught this; this she firmly holds, preaches, declares, and teaches; the unchangeable and true opinion of the orthodox Fathers and Doctors, Latin as well as Greek” (1955,DS 460).

Thank you for drawing attention also to these so lofty matters of dogmatic theology.

I bless you.

Father Angelo