Earlier this year I attended a retreat put on by the St. Paul Biblical Center.  At this retreat Dr. John Bergsma, a scripture scholar who teaches at Steubenville University and works with Scott Hahn at the St. Paul Biblical Center, gave three talks on how the Holy Spirit is presented in Scripture.  The first talk was about how the Holy Spirit is presented as fire, the second was how the Holy Spirit is seen as water, and the third and final talk was about how wind or air was used to point out the movement of the Holy Spirit.  As part of his talk Dr. Bergsma recommended a series of books called: The Privileged Species Series.  The first book that he recommended was written by Michael Denton and titled: Fire-Maker: How Humans Were Designed To Harness Fire and Transform Our Planet.  Quotes from this book will be in bold and my thoughts and reflections will be in normal font. 

Of all the discoveries made I the course of mankind’s long march to civilization, there was one primal discovery that made the realization of all this possible.  It’s a discovery we use every day and take completely for granted. But this discovery changed everything. Humankind discovered how to make and tame fire...Darwin rightly saw it as “Probably the greatest (discovery), excepting language ever made by man.” 

How many things in life do we take for granted? I know that I am guilty of taking so much for granted, including the existence and use of fire.  Every morning, I wake up, come downstairs and turn on the kitchen stove to cook breakfast.  I have extraordinarily little to no thoughts about all that goes into the creation of the small fire that comes to life every time I turn a dial. 

When I was in high school, I would go camping in the middle of the winter with my Boy Scout Troop.  We called these campouts “Freeze-Outs”.  It was probably on those camp-outs while on fire watch (making sure the fire stayed alive and kept us warm without getting out of control) that I most appreciated fire but even then, I took most things about fire for granted.  

After learning more about all that goes into making a good fire and into controlling fire from Michael Denton’s book, I am amazed that some people like Darwin could still believe that human beings discover of fire was just an accident and that we are all just some cosmic accident.  Learning more about fire helped convinced me more and more that there has to be a Divine Being out there who is supremely intelligent.  

In many ways the Holy Spirit is like fire in the sense that we so often take it for granted.  We would not be able to do anything without it.  

The primal discovery of fire opened a long path toward modern technology.  The ability to tame fire led to the invention of the art of cooking and to the discovery like fire hardens lumps of clay into hard stone or pottery, which can be molded into containers for storing food.  This initiated the development of mankind’s first industry—ceramics, which was well established in many parts of the world before 10,000 B.C.  

The Holy Spirit is life fire in that it has the ability to change what it encounters.  How it changes a thing also depends on how it encounters the item.  For example, fire can burn or scold a person when not properly cared for and the Holy Spirit (according to St. Ignatius of Loyola) is a nagging irritating voice to those who are moving away from God and a pleasant encouraging voice to those who are moving toward God.    As fire can have many different effects on an item so the Holy Spirit can produce many different things in a person.  We call these things fruits or gifts of the Holy Spirit.  

As Arthur Wilson comments: “In whatever manner the secret of metallurgy was unraveled—and we shall never know precisely—it was a momentous step along the road to civilization… man, though still stumbling entered the Age of Metals and open up undreamed of possibilities for his future.” 

The idea of using fire to combine metals made me think of the Sacrament of Confirmation.  While we do receive the gift of the Holy Spirit at Baptism, it is at Confirmation that we are challenged to use the Holy Spirit in a way that will change the world for the better.  St. Catherine of Sienna even uses the image of fire to talk about how a Christian is supposed to live: “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.”