Delbrêl on the Holy Spirit

Our actions are to be a glove of soft leather on the fingers of the Holy Spirit.

As I’ve noted elsewhere, Venerable Madeleine Delbrêl was determined to relive Christ. Reliving Christ does not mean working for Christ. She didn’t want to be Jesus’ functionary. She didn’t want to be “used” by Jesus. No. She set out to “relive Christ in the midst of a de-Christianized world.” This was her sole aim. She wanted to be so united with Jesus as to relive him. She wanted to become Christ. 

Reliving Christ is only possible through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Ven. Madeleine Delbrêl offers a striking image of the action of the Holy Spirit in our lives that is worth reflecting upon. Here’s what she says:

A love like this [i.e., love of the martyrs—of witnesses] is a costly, expensive love…You have to pray a lot to obtain this love. God does not give the salvation of others to active people but to actions. Not to active people for whom activity is full of bad leavening from our old nature. But to actions, which are a glove of very soft leather on the fingers of the Holy Spirit.

I would like to offer seven points of reflection on Delbrêl’s image:

1. A “hand-in-glove” — this idiom gets at intimacy, deep collaboration, and “the perfect fit.” A glove that’s too big or too small is annoying, cumbersome. The “fit” of the Holy Spirit into our lives is the perfect fit. It is something deep and intimate.

2. A glove does not move itself, but must be moved by the hand that animates it. This is how the Holy Spirit should be in our lives. The Spirit is the animator within us who moves us.

3. A glove manifests the movements of the hand within it. When someone wears a glove, you do not see their hand moving, but the glove. Our lives, too, should show forth the movement of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, who is invisible, becomes visible through our lives.

4. When wearing a glove, the fingerprints of the hand are on the inside of the glove. The fingerprints of the Holy Spirit are on the interior of our lives — our interior life. The spiritual life is the life in the Spirit. We want the “fingerprints” of the Holy Spirit all over the interior of our lives.

5. Madeleine Delbrêl points out that the glove is soft leather. Leather needs to be worn in. Think of new leather shoes or a new baseball glove. That leather is stiff and needs to be worn in, softened. You wear in a baseball glove by applying oil, working it, pounding it with a rubber mallet. You have to work it. The key is, something outside the leather itself has to work on it, move it, bend it. The same is true for us. The Christian life is all about opening up to someone else — God — to be worked on, to be worked in.

6. You often use leather gloves for work. Work gloves made of leather allow a person to handle rough and difficult things without damaging or injuring the hands. So too, as Catholic Christians, we are often called to handle tough situations. Really, the Spirit wants to handle the tough situation. Our lives, our actions are simply his glove — the means by which it is handled.

7. But, you can also use a leather glove to handle delicate things as well. When handling a rare jewel or piece of artwork, one uses a glove so as to not mar the surface of the image in any way. Such items are handled with a certain delicacy. So too with the souls entrusted to our care by God (by this, I mean ever person we encounter in any given moment). We are to handle them with delicacy, regardless of how rough they are.