Patristic Wisdom: Looking to Pentecost Sunday

These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. You have heard Me say to you, “I am going away and coming back to you.” If you loved Me, you would rejoice because I said, “I am going to the Father,” for My Father is greater than I. “And now I have told you before it comes, that when it does come to pass, you may believe. I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me. But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave Me commandment, so I do. Arise, let us go from here. (John 14:25–31)

The Savior affirms that the Father sends the Holy Spirit in His name. Now, properly speaking, the name of the Savior is “Son,” because this name indicates the sharing of nature and (so to speak) what is proper to the persons. Since the Father sends the Holy Spirit in the name of the Son, one should not understand Him as a servant, as foreign to, or as cut off from the Son.…

And so, just as servants who have come in the name of the Lord point toward the Lord and communicate what is proper to Him because they are subject to and serve Him—for they are servants, after all, of the Lord—so too, the Son who comes in the name of the Father communicates what is proper to the Father and His name. These supply the proof that He is the only-begotten Son of God. Therefore, the Holy Spirit is sent by the Father in the name of the Son, and has what is proper to the Son insofar as he is God, but does not have sonship such that He is God’s son. This shows that He is joined to the Son in unity. For this reason, He is also called the Spirit of the Son, and by adoption makes sons of those who wanted to receive Him: For since you are sons of God, the Father has sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!”

The Holy Spirit Himself, who has been sent by the Father and comes in the name of the Son, will teach all things to those who are perfect in the faith of Christ, (that is, all things which are spiritual and intelligible)—in sum, the mysteries of truth and wisdom. But He will not teach as an instructor or teacher of a discipline which has been learned from another. For this method pertains to those who learn wisdom and the other arts by means of study and diligence. Rather, as He Himself is the art, the teaching, the wisdom, and the Spirit of Truth, He invisibly imparts knowledge of divine things to the mind.

Didymus the Blind, On the Holy Spirit 133, 138–141