The Descent of the Holy Spirit at Saint John the Apostle, Leesburg, VA

As much due to the emerging influence of evangelical Protestantism as western society’s incapacity or unwillingness to stomach the language of the Christian religion, the Holy Spirit has, in recent times, been dealt a rather poor hand. We hear people speak of being “spiritual, but not religious”; of being “moved by the Spirit” to sit lightly (at best) and ignore (at worst) core teachings of the faith. We have even seen attempts in some quarters to label the Holy Spirit as some sort of feminine goddess (because, you see, the Hebrew noun Ruarch is feminine, even if the Latin Spiritus is masculine), as if the past two thousand years of Church history – littered as it is with the most spectacular examples of women saints – martyrs, virgins, and doctors of the Church – somehow sought to eradicate the fairer sex altogether from our collective memory.

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