Category Archives: Holy Spirit

Pentecost and the Three Conversions

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The first Christian Pentecost was a feast of fulfillment.  It was, in a very real sense, a graduation ceremony in which twelve simple men from various walks of life became prophets, preachers, priest, prodigies, and polygots.  A feast of fulfillment because they became what they were destined to be.  Removed some 2000 years from Pentecost, it is, for us, a feast of possibility.  The Holy Spirit is ever ready to pour out His power on each and every believer.  The problem though is that the average believer is not ready to receive His power.  Part of the reason for this is that we view Pentecost as an isolated event; a miracle for sure but not magical.  The Apostles were ready to receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit and in so doing, left for us a model of preparation that we need to follow.

Protestants would have us to believe that union with the Holy Spirit comes about through faith, that is, by a single moment of conversion.  Sacred Scripture and the Mystical Doctors of the Church teach otherwise.  They teach, each in his or her own way, that three conversions are necessary for union with the Holy Spirit.  One of them, St. Catherine of Siena, shows how the Spiritual life of the Apostles reveals the content of these three conversions which culminate in the fullness of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.

As in all activity, our spiritual lives are marked by three levels of maturity—beginners, proficients, and perfected.  These three stages are clearly delineated in the Scriptural account of the lives of the Apostles and therefore serve as a model for each of us.  St. Catherine in her Dialogue traces each of the three conversions of St. Peter and enables us to see some of the qualities of each in order to facilitate our own growth towards union with God.

St. Peter and the Three Conversions

The first conversion happens when St. Peter acknowledges he is “a sinful man” and Our Lord promises to make him a “fisher of men”.  From that point forward, St. Peter set out on what St. John of the Cross calls the Purgative Way.  This is the most active of the stages in that we must, under the instigation of actual grace, remove all the obstacles to true growth.  For St. Peter, this purgative stage lasts almost the entirety of the pre-Passion and Resurrection accounts in the gospels.  It also helps to explain why St. Peter shows such incredible flashes of sanctity while also being called “Satan”.  St. Peter will remain in this stage until he is no longer scandalized by suffering and is willing to mortify himself completely.  Even during the Trial of Jesus, he keeps the suffering Christ at a distance and therefore fails to admit to even knowing Him.  He loves Jesus, but not more than he loves himself. 

It is just after the three-fold denial that St. Peter experiences his second conversion.  When Our Lord gazes upon Him just after his third denial, He receives the grace of deep sorrow for his sin.  St. Peter’s second conversion occurs when he has him “come to Jesus” with Our Lord on the shore of the Sea of Galilea with his three-fold affirmation of his love for Jesus.  In loving Our Lord “more than these” St. Peter is no longer deterred nor scandalized by the fact that he will have to suffer.  Each of his affirmations, according to Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, marks each of the three distinct motives for the second conversion.  We find the juxtaposition of the two Greek words for love—love of friendship (philia) and love of God (agape)—in the dialogue to mark the rooting out of all traces of self-love by a desire for Divine friendship and filial love of God.  Secondly, Peter is aware of the great price of Christ’s Blood.  Third is the love of souls that need to be saved in his desire to “feed my sheep.” 

Furthermore, he must first go through the Night of the Spirit where he no longer is aware of Christ’s continual presence.  He only “feels” His presence on a few occasions and loses it completely when Our Lord ascends into Heaven.  Just as in the transition from the first conversion to the second there must be a purgation of the sense, a purgation of the spirit must be undergone in order to pave the way for the third conversion.  It would seem that the Apostles were on the fast track in that they only had to endure the Night of the Spirit for 50 days, until we put ourselves in their sandals and realize how painful it must have been for them.  They had spent three and a half years, day in and day out, with the constant awareness of God’s physical presence.

All of this leads up to the third conversion on the day of Pentecost.  Our Lord had meticulously been leading St. Peter to this moment when he would be united to God in the fullest sense possible on Earth.  He still was not perfected, but he was closely yoked to God in the Unitive Stage.  What we need to focus on is that Pentecost was not just an isolated event in their spiritual journey but the culmination of it.  He, along with the other Apostles, received the Holy Spirit because they were ready for it. 

All of this talk of the need for a “New Pentecost” is really a call for more saints who have the courage to set out through the Dark Nights and to be so purified as to become completely united to the Holy Spirit.  Without the proper preparation work this “New Pentecost” will never happen.  With the path of the threefold conversion the Apostles have left us along with the instructions of the great Mystical Doctors of the Church, we “shall renew the face of the earth”  and share in the fruits of the same Pentecost that marked the birth of the Church.

Restoring the Kingdom

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Just prior to Our Lord’s Ascension, the disciples ask Him about the coming of the Messianic Kingdom; “Lord, will you at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel?” He responds rather cryptically, saying “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samar′ia and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:7-8).  Many people read this answer as a non-answer, a dismissal of sorts because the Apostles were asking the wrong question.  It is usually followed up by a comment as to just how clueless the Apostles still were even after spending their 40-day bonus round with Our Lord.  But it is not the Apostles that were clueless, but us.

Notice first, that the Apostles were expecting Jesus to restore the kingdom to Israel.  Having had “their minds opened to understand the Scriptures,” (Luke 24:45) the Apostles understood that the Christ would restore the kingdom to Israel.  Their question is not if, but when.  This is no dodge or redirection, but about the most direct answer He can give.  The restoration of the kingdom to Israel will occur when they “receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” that is, on Pentecost.

The Meaning of Pentecost

For us to grasp this, we need to first understand the meaning of the Jewish feast of Pentecost.  Fifty days after the first Passover, the People of Israel “came into the wilderness of Sinai” (Ex 19:1).  It was there that Moses ascended Mt Sinai and brought the Torah to the people.  This giving of the law that governs Israel marks the birth of Israel as a People.  The Feast of Weeks, as it was known, was instituted to mark this event and was one of the three great Jewish feasts, when “all males shall appear in the sight of almighty God” (Ex 34:23).  This feast was also known by its Greek name, Pentecost.  This is what St. Luke was referring to when he mentions that the disciples were all gathered in one place “When the day of Pentecost had come” this is the feast that he is referring to” (Luke 2:1). 

The Feast of Weeks was also the Feast of Reaping (c.f. Deut 16:9-11) to offer to God the first fruits of the Wheat Harvest.  This helps to explain the abundant harvest of the 3000 souls that the Apostles reaped on that day, 50 days after the Divine grain of wheat became standing grain (c.f. Deut 16:9).  The harvest of 3000 souls also ties back to those who, while God was giving Moses the Law, worshipped the Golden Calf and were punished by death (Exodus 32:28). 

Pentecost then is the “time the Father has fixed” for the restoration of the kingdom to Israel.  This restoration occurs when the Jewish Feast of Weeks finds its fulfillment in the Christian Pentecost.  Jesus, the New Moses, ascended to Mount Zion, and God gives the New Law.  This New Law is not written on stone, but on our hearts by the Finger of God’s Right Hand (i.e. the Holy Spirit, c.f. Veni Creator Spiritus).  Just as in the giving of the Law to Moses, it is accompanied by a mighty wind and flashes of fire (c.f. Ex 19:18 and Acts 2:2-3). 

Because the Jews were obligated by Divine precept to travel to Jerusalem for the Feast of Weeks, “there were devout Jews from every nation” (Acts 2:5) to show the universality of the restored Kingdom.  But it also has unity as reflected by the fact that all present heard Peter in their own tongue.  God undoes the disunity that was created at Babel by uniting all mankind under the Tower of Peter, the house built upon the Rock.  This restored Kingdom then bears four marks: Unity, Holiness, Catholicity, and Apostolicity.

Therefore, Just as the People of Israel found its birth at Sinai on the 50th day after Passover, the People of the New Israel finds its birth on Pentecost, on the 50th day after the new Passover.  Our Lord restored the Kingdom to Israel on that day, the same day that we celebrate the birth of the Church.  This link created by Our Lord in his response to the Apostles’ question between the Ascension and Pentecost helps to maintain the inseparable link between Israel and the Church.  The new Israel formed from a remnant of the Israel of Old (c.f. Is 10:20-22) will be gathered together by the Messiah.  All such promises made to Israel are taken up and fulfilled in the Church.  This connection also maintains the necessity that the Church be both universal (catholic) and united from within a visible structure.   

The Unforgivable Sin

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If Jesus does not both shock and disturb when He speaks to us through the Scriptures, then we aren’t taking Him seriously enough.  Take as an example this Sunday’s Gospel when Jesus, Mercy Incarnate, returns to Galilee and accuses the scribes of doing the seemingly impossible—committing a sin that will not be forgiven.  “Truly I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness but is guilty of an eternal sin” (Mk 3:28-29).  These words ought to shake us, especially in an age of exaggerated mercy.  While Jesus leaves us clues as to the nature of this unpardonable sin, He does not really come out and tell us what it is.  Therefore, there can be great spiritual benefit in investigating this question more deeply.

St Thomas Aquinas found this to be a question of particular importance as well and includes it among the questions dealing with sins against faith.  Standing on the shoulders of his saintly predecessors, the Angelic Doctor says that there are three traditional ways in which this has been interpreted.

The First Two Interpretations

The first is the literal meaning based on the context in which Christ said it.  To utter a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (or God in general) is to ascribe to the devil that which comes by the power of God.  The best historical example of this is the Golden Calf in which an Egyptian god (which St. Augustine says was actually a demon) is said to have led Israel out of Egypt.  So clear was the action of God in rescuing them that the Israelites could not have acted out either weakness or ignorance.  Therefore there is no excuse in receiving punishment and the sin is unpardonable.  Returning to the passage however, Jesus is not condemning the Scribes per se, but instead issuing a warning.  Because Our Lord had yet to reveal His divinity, they acted out of ignorance, an ignorance He reminds the Father of from the Cross (c.f. Lk 23:34).

This is related to the second interpretation that Aquinas mentions.  He says it is a sin against the Holy Spirit specifically because it is a sin of malice.  Because power is appropriated to the Father, to sin against the Father is a sin of weakness.  Likewise, because wisdom is appropriated to the Son Who is the Word, ignorance is a sin against the Son.  And because goodness is appropriated to the Holy Spirit, then a sin against the Holy Spirit is a sin of malice.  With full consent and full knowledge, a sin against the Holy Spirit is a sin of malice, that is in essence saying “evil be my good.”  This particular sin is the eternal sin because it removes all of those things from us that might be a cure.  It creates a hardening of the heart like Pharaoh in which the grace of conversion cannot penetrate.

As a fruitful tangent, the doctrine of appropriation in which we ascribe to specific persons of the Trinity that which in truth is an action of all three is not only a way in which we learn more about the life within the Trinity, but also a way to develop a relationship with each of the Persons individually.  When we need strength we should pray directly to the Father, wisdom to the Son and power over evil the Holy Spirit.  This habit of prayer and personal relationship keeps us falling into the trap of believing the doctrine of the Trinity while not really believing in the Trinity.

A Third Interpretation

The third interpretation that Aquinas mentions is also the most favored today, although often in an overly simplistic way.  Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit can be viewed as final impenitence.  In this interpretation, the blasphemy occurs not necessarily in word, but in thought or deed.  It is against the Holy Spirit because it acts contrary to the forgiveness of sins which is the work of the Holy Spirit (c.f. Jn 20:22).  It is also the favored interpretation of the Great Mercy Pope, St. John Paul II.  In his encyclical on the Holy Spirit, Dominum et Vivificantem he says that “the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit consists precisely in the radical refusal to accept this forgiveness, of which he is the intimate giver and which presupposes the genuine conversion which he brings about in the conscience” (DV, 46).

Standing on the shoulders of these saintly giants then, why is this most widely accepted answer overly simplistic?  Because there are two ways in which final impenitence can manifest itself.  First there is the obvious stubborn refusal even on one’s death bed, call it an impenitence of the will, to repent.  But there is a second, and for many of us more dangerous way, and that is through what we might call an impenitence of fact.  Although many of us envision our deaths being something we can plan for, the truth is that many of us die suddenly without much warning at all.  That means our temporal impenitence can become final impenitence.

This final impenitence in fact is not necessarily brought about by a hardness of heart, but we become victims to Aquinas’ insight that the sin “unforgivable by its very nature, insofar as it excludes the elements through which the forgiveness of sin takes place.”

In short, we simply a refusal to examine ourselves well and are blocked by presumption.  Fear of the Lord, through which we seek the forgiveness of sins is a certain (healthy) anxiety by which we recognize that in truth we are fugitives from hell and that it is only God’s mercy that saves us.  This is healthy not because we are morbid, but because each time we accuse ourselves of a sin, we are humbled and God is glorified in His mercy.  Each time we stir up sorrow for our sins, God is glorified in His mercy.  And ultimately this is why, no matter how we interpret the passage, we should take Our Lord’s warning to heart: to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit is to refuse God the glory of His mercy.

The Mediatrix of All Graces?

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Since Pope Pius XII declared the dogma of the Assumption in 1950, Marian devotees within the Church have been championing the cause of a fifth Marian dogma. namely Mary as Mediatrix of All Graces.  Whether or not a formal declaration comes soon, Tradition up and through the Second Vatican Council supports this as a definitive belief, although the particulars still need to be worked out.  Yet most people’s response to this is that it simply goes too far.  We may be willing to concede that she intercedes for us or that she is a mediatrix of grace in some ways, but the title of Mediatrix of All Graces tips the dogmatic scales towards Mariolotry.  But before rejecting it wholesale, we might examine exactly what this doctrine means.

A mediator, in the sense we are using it here, is one who stands between God and man, taking the gifts from God and distributing them to men.  Christ as Mediator, in strict justice, is able to take as much grace as He wants and distribute it to mankind as He sees fit.  One of the ways in which He does so is through secondary mediators.  These mediators no longer act in strict justice but instead as friends of Christ.  When Christ sought to heal the paralytic who encountered Peter and John, He did so through the mediation of Peter (Act 3:1-7).  This, of course, is but one example of many throughout all of history that continues even down to our day when Christians still perform miracles and priests become mediators of grace through the Sacraments.   In this very broad sense Scripture and common sense testify that Mary is a mediatrix (Note: mediatrix is just the feminine form of mediator, like waiter and waitress) in a unique and wholly unrivaled way.  But to go any further we must first set a foundation upon which the doctrine of Mary, Mediatrix of All Graces can be built.

The One Mediator

The cornerstone of such a foundation is necessarily built upon the stone that the builders rejected—Christ—“Who is the one mediator between God and man” (1Tim 2:5).  Anything that we say from this point forward can never diminish or overshadow that truth.  Mary may have been supreme and unique in her co-operation with Christ, but it was He Who was the primary operator.  Mary’s mediation is always sub-ordinated to Christ’s and not co-ordinated.  She may be the branch from which all the fruit grows, but He is the Tree.   He is the one mediator between God and man, but through the designs of Divine Providence chose His Mother to share uniquely in His mission as the source of all grace and in a very real sense made His distribution of grace dependent upon her.  Her role as co-operator in His redeeming mission was entirely unique, for He made Himself dependent upon her “[N]ot only because she consented to make sacrifice for the salvation of men possible, but also in the fact that she accepted the mission of protecting and nourishing the Lamb of sacrifice, and when the time came led Him to the altar of immolation…” (Pope St. Pius X Ad Diem Ilium).

It is because Mary was predestined to be the Mother of God that she received a fullness of grace.  This fullness is exceeded only by Christ’s sacred humanity; hypostatically united to the second Person of the Trinity.  She who is “full of grace” is the pre-eminent beneficiary of Him from Whose “fullness we have received grace upon grace” (Jn. 1:16).  Her fullness of grace and its cause, namely the divine indwelling of the Holy Spirit, makes the Spirit more operative in and through her than all the other saints combined.  We shall come back to this point shortly but it is worth noting that anything that any of the saints can do in the supernatural realm, Mary can do better.

If the source of Mary’s greatness comes from her mission as Mother of God then anything we say about her can only serve to glorify God rather than to eclipse Him.  Many object to the very idea of the Mediatrix of All Graces because it seems to turn her into a goddess.  And if we didn’t know better we might agree because it is such a supreme calling.  But in truth it is meant to reveal the greatness of God’s saving act.  So powerfully did Christ trample sin and death that He is able to elevate a mere creature to an almost full participation in the life of God.  Rather than diminishing the work of Christ, Mary as Mediatrix of All Graces, reveals it more fully.  “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is’ (1 John 3:2).  Mary’s heavenly life is the realization of this promise and the Church presents her as such in order to stoke the fires of our faith, hope and charity.

All Graces?

With the necessary foundation in place, we may now begin to build the house.  When we say that Mary is the Mediatrix of All Graces what we mean is not just that Mary obtains grace from God by her prayers but that she also transmits them to us by her actions.  We must first admit its possibility based on what was mentioned above.  If angels and saints can be secondary causes of grace then Mary can do so to a greater degree.  This “greater degree” is not just some graces, but all graces.  As Pope Leo XIII, building on a line of tradition that traces all the way back to the Fathers of the Church, says, “no grace is given to us except through Mary, such being the Divine Will” (Pope Leo XIII, Octobri Mense).  We must not see this however as eliminating all other secondary causes of grace or making them “tertiary” causes of grace.  Instead what this means is, say for something like the Sacraments, that she would obtain for us the grace of a good disposition to receive them. In other words we should see her as the mother who nurtures us with the milk of docility to the grace of the present moment.  She is not the cause of our holiness, but she works behind the scenes to set us to receive its increase.  In this way we say that all graces pass through her Immaculate hands.

Before concluding there is one final objection worth examining.  If Mary truly is the Mediatrix of All Graces, then why would there be any prayers that do not invoke her?  As should be clear by now this objection does not fully grasp what it means to say that she is mediatrix of all graces.  But it also confuses our prayer to her with her prayer to God.  This doctrine does not mean that no grace is given without our asking her, only that she plays such an intimate role in our interior life that no grace is given to us without her asking God for it.  In fact, the only reason why we do ask her and not go directly to God is because she gives more glory to God in the asking than we do.  As God’s most perfect creature, whose soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, her asking is more pleasing to God and becomes an offer He can’t refuse.  This is why she is Our Lady of Mercy and never Our Lady of Justice.

Take and Read

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As a Bible-believing Christian I will confess to finding red-letter Bibles to be a paradox.  Paradoxical, not in their application—words that are written as coming directly from the mouth of Jesus have red text—but in their principle.  The implication being that these words and their red lettering should give us pause as we read them because these are really the word of God, spoken directly from the mouth of the Word of God made man.  Do the words of Jesus according to Matthew, Mark, Luke or John carry a heavier weight than the words of God contained in the letters of Paul or Peter?  The red letters might lead us to believe this to be true, but the truth is that both are equally acts of condescension by God to speak to us in a language we can understand.  It is the Word of God using the voice of man.  It is not just the red letters, but “all scripture [that] is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17).  Perhaps the publishers of those Bibles can be forgiven for succumbing to a marketing ploy of sorts, but it also betrays a pitfall that many of us fall into in our use of Sacred Scripture.  Notice that I said use and not just read.  Why I used the former rather than the latter will become evident momentarily.

If we were to parse some of that red lettering, then something will become rather obvious to us.  When the Word of God speaks, things happen.  When He commands demons to depart, they leave.  When He commands storms to cease, everything is calm.  When He commands a crippled man to walk, he grows strong and walks.  He even commands the Apostles to “not be afraid” and fear exits.  To these we could multiply other examples throughout Scripture starting with God speaking creation into being in Genesis and ending with the creation of the New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation.  The Word of God is performative and while this power is earth shattering in the literal sense, it is hardly so in the figurative sense.  We already know this—after all this is what makes God, well, God.

What’s In it for You and Me?

Until, however, we go a step further and ask what difference this makes for you and for me.  For this, we have to call to mind two very important Scripture passages about Scripture itself.  First there is a passage from the fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah in which the Sacred Author, operating under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says that:

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return there without watering the earth And making it bear and sprout, And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; So will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; It will not return to Me empty, Without accomplishing what I desire, And without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it” (Is 55:10-12).

This is God reminding us of the power of His speech.  But when exactly did He send forth these words of Scripture?  Was it back in the 6th Century BC when these words were likely written, or was it yesterday when we heard it as the first reading at Mass?  God is speaking from the eternal now so that His words speak to all times and places.  When you read these words and I read these words they are spoken to you and to me right here and right now.  In inspiring the author of Isaiah to put these words to sheepskin, God in His Providence knew exactly when and how you and I would encounter them.  He addressed them to you and me directly, not just in a generically but in a deeply personal sense.  Inspiration did not stop in the author but extends to each of the readers.  It is the Holy Spirit speaking directly to us.  This helps explain why we might read the same Scripture passage many times and “get something different out of it” each time.  Those words were spoken not just way back when, but here and now.  It is also why Scripture scholars usually struggle praying with the Scriptures—they read it only as a theology textbook and assume they have exhausted its meaning without plummeting the depths of its personal message.  They may read the Scriptures but fail to use them as God’s preferential means of communicating with us individually.

There is a concomitant passage to Isaiah in the New Testament that helps further illuminate the point.  In the Letter to the Hebrews the sacred author says that “the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.  No creature is concealed from him, but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must render an account” (Hebrews 4:12-13).  Sacred Scripture needs no red letter, nor is it a dead letter, but it is also much more than a read letter too.  Recall that when God speaks, things happen—even if that word is spoken to you and me in the Sacred Scripture.  When we read and meditate on these Scriptures we are changed, not just because we make great resolutions, but because God’s word changes us simply by being heard.  We can easily overlook this but we should expect it to happen.  As the Catechism puts it, “Still, the Christian faith is not a ‘religion of the book.’ Christianity is the religion of the ‘Word’ of God, a word which is ‘not a written and mute word, but the Word which is incarnate and living.’  If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, ‘open [our] minds to understand the Scriptures’” (CCC 108).

The Witness of the Saints

History is full of examples of saints who were changed simply by an encounter with God through the Scriptures.  The most famous example is St. Augustine.  He was a man who, after a long intellectual battle, found the Christian explanation of reality to be true.  Nevertheless he struggled with the moral demands, famously praying “Lord make me chaste, just not yet.”  One day Augustine was in a garden praying and he heard a voice telling him “Tolle Lege,” that is “Take and read.”  He understood it to mean the epistles of St. Paul that he had left in the house.  When he grasped the book and opened to a (seemingly) random page, his eyes fell upon Romans 13:12-14—“Let us then throw off the works of darkness [and] put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and licentiousness, not in rivalry and jealousy.  But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.”  In that moment the saint found the moral strength to fully convert and live totally for the Lord.  God spoke, and Augustine was changed.

Augustine himself was moved by the example of another Scriptural convert, St. Anthony of the desert who one day heard the Gospel of the Rich Young Man and knew that it was addressed to him.  He sold everything, went into the desert, and was instrumental in preserving the Christian faith during the Diocletian persecution.  We could multiply the examples but the point is that these men saw the Scriptures as a medium of communication between God and themselves.  They ardently believed that the Scriptures held the power of God’s direct speech.  With such a cloud of witnesses, shouldn’t we do the same?

Christian Dignity

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There is a certain logic and progression to the Catechism that reveals it to be more than a book of beliefs, but a map for the spiritual journey.  After delivering the content of what we believe (the creeds) and how we are empowered to believe it (the Sacraments), the Catechism examines what being a Christian looks like through an account of the moral life.   It begins with a quote that, at least at first glance, flies in the face of what most of us think of when we consider the moral life of a Christian.  It references a Christmas homily of St. Leo the Great in which the great pope exhorts Christians to “recognize your dignity and, now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return to your former base condition by sinning. Remember who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Never forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of the Kingdom of God” (CCC 1691).  Of course it mentions “not sinning” but his reasoning for shunning sin strikes many of us as a little off.  He mentions nothing about breaking commandments or risking salvation but instead says sin is beneath our dignity as Christians.  In reading the signs of the times, the authors of the Catechism chose this particular quote because of both its timelessness and timeliness.  We live in an age of defensive Christianity and it is only by embracing our dignity as Christians that we can go on the offense once again.

This last sentence regarding widespread defensiveness bears an explanation.  There are certainly many Christians that live in a defensive stance against the world, trying to protect Christianity from outside influences.  Insofar as that is concerned, this is a good and necessary stance provided it is done with proper moderation.  What I mean by “defensive Christianity” has to do with the stance we take in our individual spiritual lives.  Most of us see a life of grace as one in which we are protected from evil.  Evidence the habit, even within Catholic circles, to focus on “being saved” and “getting to heaven.”  Both are important, but they represent a stunted view of the Christian life.  By placing the emphasis on our Christian dignity and off of merely being saved, we can fly towards Christian perfection and sanctification.

Dignity

Although this may be slightly tangential, it is worth discussing the concept of dignity.  Many people insist that men and women have an inherent dignity because they are made in the “image and likeness of God.”  That is not entirely true.  Adam and Eve were made in the image and likeness of God, but we are not.  Our dignity rests in the fact that we are made in the image of God.  That is, as creatures who have the spiritual powers of intellect and will, we surpass all of material creation in greatness.  This means that we are afforded a certain treatment that we call dignity.

Christian dignity is something more because it restores God’s likeness.   To “be like” God means we have a nature like His, or, more accurately since He is God, a share in His nature.  It is the “likeness of God” that was forfeit by our first parents and, thanks to Christ’s redeeming sacrifice, is restored to us in Baptism.  Christian dignity then stems from our restored likeness to God or as St. Leo puts it “recognize your dignity and, now that you share in God’s own nature.”

Of course Pope St. Leo is just reminding of something that Pope St. Peter said in his second letter—“that you may become partakers of the Divine nature” (2Pt 1:3).  Catholics have always called this share in the Divine nature sanctifying grace.  But Catholics rarely reflect on the full impact that this has and what our being “born anew of the Spirit” (c.f. Jn 3:6-7) really means.  Because most assuredly if we did then, at least according to the Saintly Pontiff, it would be enough to keep us from forfeiting it through sin.

Reading the Scriptures with the Head and not just the Heart

One of the obstacles has to do with our approach to Scripture.  We can read it with sentimentality rather than taking it literally.  One might be excused with reading St. John’s letters this way when he says something like “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are…Beloved, we are God’s children now” (1 Jn 3:1-2).  But one cannot ever read St. Paul in a sentimental manner.  When he says “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, “Abba! Father!”  it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God,  and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Romans 8:15-17) we should take our sonship quite literally.  This is a repeated theme throughout the New Testament and one of the keys to understanding what it means to be a Christian.  We are quite literally God’s children only because He has given of His own nature to us.  To be adopted by Him means not just that we were created by Him, but that as Father He recreated us by impressing His own nature on us.

There is more to this than simply realizing it.  He gave this gift to us not just as protection from sin (i.e. that we might be saved) but for us to make use of it.  Those in a state of grace are given a super-nature, one that enables them not just to “be like God” but to act like Him.  As the name implies, this supernatural power builds upon our natural power, or more accurately, it transforms and elevates it.  The more we use this super-nature, the more we become like God which only makes us the super-nature more (in theological terms we increase in sanctifying grace).  We become, as Jesus commanded us “perfect as the heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5:48).  Notice too how this clears up all the intellectual debates about faith and works and merits.  It is us using God’s nature that He was given us.

This also takes the emphasis off of “getting to heaven.”  Why?  Because we are already there.  Heaven is the place where God dwells and those who dwell with Him enjoy union with Him.  With the gift of sanctifying grace comes the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (c.f. Romans 5:2-5).  God comes and takes up residence in our souls so that we may be united with Him.  Again, sentimentality blocks us from understanding what St. Paul means when he says we are “Temples of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6:19).  The Holy Spirit truly comes into our souls and dwells there.  With Him come the other two Divine Persons as they cannot be separated, even if their mode of presence is different (like the Incarnation).  That is why St. Paul says we have been given the “first fruits” of heaven through the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:22-23).  It is still first-fruits so that the degree in which we will know God (faith versus the Beatific Vision) is different, but not in kind.  Divine grace truly contains the seeds of heaven, growing day by day.  Our focus should not be simply getting there, but acting like you are already there.  As St Theresa of Avila said, “it is heaven all the way to heaven.”

If all that I have said to this point is true, then why would we ever forfeit it for a momentary delight?  There are no “cheap thrills”; each is more expensive than we could possibly imagine.  We would be more foolish than Esau who failed to see his dignity as the first-born son and sold his birth right for a bowl of porridge (Gen 25:29-34).  This is Pope St. Leo’s crucial point—stop and recognize who you are now, Whose you are now; do you really want to throw that all away?  Recognize your dignity Christian.

The Power of Pentecost

Church, Holy Spirit, Sacraments, Uncategorized, ,

Within the Jewish Liturgical Year, there were seven major feasts, three of which were considered “major feasts” and were commanded as times when the males were to “appear before the Lord God” in Jerusalem (c.f. Exodus 23:14-17).  These three major feasts were the feast of Unleavened Bread, the feast of the Ingathering at the end of the year, and the harvest festival.  The Harvest festival, or the Feast of Weeks was to occur on the fiftieth day after Passover (there was some disagreement among the Pharisees and Sadducees as to when the actual feast was to be celebrated).  In later antiquity, it would come to be as Pentecost (Greek for “fiftieth”) by the Greek-speaking Jews.  It was for the celebration of this feast that many Jews from throughout the world (Parthians, Medes, Mesopotamian, Egyptians, etc. as listed in Acts 2:9-10) had gathered when the Holy Spirit was finally manifest on that day.

This helps to explain why so many were gathered on that day in Jerusalem to witness the power from on high, but it does not necessarily explain why it had to be that feast day.  In other words, why was it that the Jewish Feast of Weeks found its fulfillment on Pentecost?

A word first about the concept of “fulfillment.”  When we hear this term used, there is a tendency to think “it had to happen that day in order to fulfill the meaning of Pentecost.”  In short, we can think that the purpose of Pentecost was to fulfill the Feast of Weeks.  Thinking in these terms there is a danger of thinking that the Feast of Weeks is obsolete and now only Pentecost matters.  Properly understood though we should attempt to see things the other way around.  The purpose of the Feast of Weeks was to make Pentecost understandable.  It may no longer be efficacious, but it is not devoid of meaning.  God was so demanding in the rubrics surrounding the Jewish liturgy because He wanted them to act as clear signs of the thing they were pointing to.  The Jews gathered in Jerusalem on Pentecost would have recognized what was happening and were instantly moved upon hearing Peter’s explanation.  But Pentecost was not just for them.  By deepening our own understanding of the Feast of Weeks, we can enter more fully into the celebration and join those first Christians in being “cut to the heart.”

This challenge of deepening our understanding of the Jewish celebrations is echoed in the Catechism:

A better knowledge of the Jewish people’s faith and religious life as professed and lived even now can help our better understanding of certain aspects of Christian liturgy…The relationship between Jewish liturgy and Christian liturgy, but also their differences in content, are particularly evident in the great feasts of the liturgical year, such as Passover. Christians and Jews both celebrate the Passover. For Jews, it is the Passover of history, tending toward the future; for Christians, it is the Passover fulfilled in the death and Resurrection of Christ, though always in expectation of its definitive consummation. (CCC 1096, emphasis added)

In ancient Israel, the Feast of Weeks was a harvest festival in which loaves of bread were offered to the Lord as a gift of the first fruits (a minor Jewish festival celebrated just after the Feast of Unleavened Bread).  It was accompanied by sacred rest and sacrifices (see Num 28:26-31).  It was by the death of the grains of wheat, the first fruits of the wheat that the bread was to be baked.   This grain then takes on the value of a sign of the One Whom “God raised up” (Acts 2:32).  As the definitive sacrifice, He ascended to heaven where God received Him and showed His approval by pouring out His Spirit by a strongly felt sign (Acts 2:33).  Rising on the day after Passover, that is the feast of first fruits, Christ is “the first fruits of those who have died” (1Cor 15:20).

The Feast of Weeks

By this powerful sign, the Apostles now become the harvesters.  And on this day, the harvest is great, drawing 3000 souls to the Lord.  This number is far from arbitrary and it would immediately bring to mind the other aspect of the Feast of Weeks, namely that it was to be marked as a time to remember the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai.

While God was giving the Law to Moses, the Israelites fashioned the Golden Calf.  In response, the Levites were commanded “’Each of you put your sword on your hip! Go back and forth through the camp, from gate to gate, and kill your brothers, your friends, your neighbors!’ The Levites did as Moses had commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people fell” (Ex 32:27-28).  Spiritually inebriated, the Apostles, that is the priestly successors to the Levites, will put to death the flesh of those 3000 souls, each of which will follow the law because it is written not in stone, but on their hearts (Jer 31:33).

The giving of the Law was the initiation of the Old Covenant.  This indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of the Faithful that will become the sign of the new Covenant, that is Baptism.  Those who are claimed for Christ, the 3000, do as Peter told them— “repent and be baptized” so that they “will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).

The giving of the Law as part of the Old Covenant also formed Israel as the People of God—that is the visible Kingdom of God on earth.  At Pentecost, the Church becomes the Kingdom of God that is open to all people.  This understanding helps bring clarity to the somewhat random question and ambiguous response Our Lord gives to the Apostles when, just prior to His Ascension, they ask “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” to which He replies that they will “receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:6,8).

The Spirit of Pentecost

All of this remains mere proof-texting unless we allow the effects of Pentecost to be felt in our day.  So many within the Church speak of waiting for a “New Pentecost” in which the power of the Holy Spirit will be made manifest once again.  But there will be no “New Pentecost” because Pentecost was not a single event, but one that was to last perpetually.  The Jews celebrated the different festivals not merely to remind them of the past, but to make the past somehow present to them so that they could participate in it.  The Feast of Weeks was a time for recalling and renewing the Old Covenant and Pentecost ought to be a time that we consciously renew our participation in the New Covenant.

The first way that this should be done is through a renewed focus on our baptismal commitment to offer spiritual sacrifices unceasingly to Christ.  Likewise, we should renew our commitment to the graces of Confirmation, that is when we received the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and march to the Front in the battle to win souls.  Offering Mass for the grace to live those two Pentecostal Sacraments to their fullest would be a worthy intention.

Pentecost is often referred to as the birthday of the Church.  With this in mind, a second way to live Pentecost is to do what we all do at all birthday celebrations—show gratitude for the gift of the person and offer a gift to pay our debt of gratitude.  We can often take for granted the gift of the Church and how much easier it makes our lives.  Yes, we have to deal with the human elements, that is the weeds among the wheat, but the guidance that her teaching office gives us can save us from making a lot of mistakes.  She speaks to nearly every aspect of our lives and offers us a sure port amidst the storms of life.  Amidst a culture in which we are “tossed to and fro by every wave of false doctrine,” there is great comfort knowing we have a place to go for the Truth.  By renewing our efforts to form ourselves in her teachings, to be docile to the truth and proclaim it loudly, we can pay the debt of our gratitude.  We are the new harvesters in the long line of harvesters known as the Communion of Saints.  Pray then, this Pentecost, that the Master of the Harvest will send more out into the fields, priests, and laity alike.

Why Many of the Jews Remained Veiled to Jesus

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In his Second Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul laments that the Jews of his day suffered ignorance regarding the identity of Christ because “their minds were hardened; for to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away.  Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their minds; but when a man turns to the Lord the veil is removed” (2 Cor 3:14-16).  One can imagine the Christians in Corinth struggling to understand how the Jewish people, steeped as they were in the Sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament, failed to see how all the prophecies find their fulfillment in Jesus.  The Corinthians are not alone in this, many of us often wonder how the Jews could miss this.

In his writings on the Antichrist, Blessed John Henry Newman has an extensive discussion on biblical prophecy in which he articulates an important principle: “It is not ordinarily the course of Divine Providence to interpret prophecy before the event.”  Newman is referring specifically to what the role of prophecy is in God’s plan.  Although prophecy is often (but not always) directed towards some future contingency, this does not mean that it is akin to being able to clearly predict what is going to happen.  If it were simply to tell everyone what is going to happen in the future, then it would seem that it should be marked by clarity.  Instead we find that prophecies are often obscure.  Prophecy, rather than being primarily for prediction, instead has the purpose of building up the body of believers (c.f 1Cor 12:10).  Its obscurity makes it impossible for those who lack the illumination from the same Spirit that inspired the prophecy to understand it.  With the gift of hindsight and illumination, it seems to us that the Old Testament prophecies concerning the coming of the Messiah are very clear.  But we need only see how much help the first Christians needed (the road to Emmaus and Matthew’s explicit mentioning of which actions fulfilled which prophecies) to see just how difficult this was.  It is only when Our Lord comes to sweep away the clouds of obscurity by opening their minds to the Scriptures that they understood it (Lk 24:45).

There is another practical reason as well that made it particularly difficult and it has to do with the nature of the Messiah.  All too often we over-generalize and say “the Jews were expecting a political Messiah and Jesus came to usher in a different kind of kingdom.”  In an age where we make everything political this offers a clean explanation.  Most of the Jews were expecting that the Messianic Age would follow right on the heels of the Messiah (c.f. Acts 1:6) and when that didn’t happen it shattered many people’s expectations.  But to label their expectations as “political” does not quite capture what they meant.

The difficulty and the obscurity came in trying to somehow reconcile these different views.  We know that they are all true, but one can imagine how difficult it would be to wed them together yourself.  What often happened is that different schools opened up in which one chose only one of them at the expense of the others.  We are often very jealous of our ideas so that once they are challenged we reject everything that doesn’t agree.

Broadly speaking there were six different sets of prophecies concerning the future Messiah:

  • New Adam—based upon the promise in Gn 3:15 of the Seed of the Woman who would crush the head of the Serpent and a promise of a restoration of Eden (Is 11:1-10, Ezekiel 36:33-38)
  • New Moses—based upon Moses’ prophecy that God will raise up a “prophet like me” (Dt 18:1-17). In this way the Jews were awaiting a New Exodus into a New Promised Land, a theme I have written about previously.
  • Son of David, “Son of God”—this is most clearly laid out in Jesus’ discussion with the Pharisees about their understanding of the opening verses of Ps 110 when Our Lord asks them about the nature of the Messiah as David’s offspring(c.f. Mt 22:41-46).
  • Son of Man—the Messiah is described by Daniel as “one like a son of man” who comes not from the earth but “with the clouds of heaven” (Daniel 7:13-15).
  • Suffering Servant—Daniel prophesies that the Messiah will be “cut off” or put to death as an atonement for sin, reconciling it with Isaiah’s Suffering Servant. Jesus reconciles this with the previous one by saying “the Son of Man came to serve, not be served and give Himself as a ransom for many” (Mt 20:28).
  • Priest of the Order of Melchizedek—this Priest will be a “priest forever of the order of Melchizedek” (Ps 110:1-4), offering the same sacrifice as the Davidic kings did (2Sam 6:13-17).

Although we might easily reconcile these different views of the Messiah now, it was a tremendous challenge for the early Christians and their Jewish counterparts.  It was especially difficult to   The Book of Hebrews, written around 65 AD was composed mainly as a reference for tying all of these strains together.

The final obstacle for the Jews was the Crucifixion.  Although there are some very obvious parallels between the Passover Lamb and Our Lord (e.g. timing, “not a bone shall be broken”, etc), the Crucifixion itself could be an insurmountable obstacle.  It was for the punishment of criminals and would have appeared to be nothing like a sacrifice.  To all appearances, Jesus was a failure and a blasphemer.  Except for one small thing.  He actually called His shot this night before.  What makes the Crucifixion recognizable as the Sacrifice is the Institution of the Eucharist the night before. It is God who institutes each of the covenantal sacrifices and gives them their meaning. He is the One who appoints the priest, the victim and the manner of sacrifice.  It was God Incarnate Who did all those things prior to the event.  Not only does the Crucifixion give meaning to the Eucharist, it is the Institution of the Eucharist by which Our Lord assigns meaning to His death on the Cross.

Who is the Holy Spirit?

Holy Spirit, Trinity

The week between Pentecost and the Feast of the Holy Trinity is an excellent time to meditate on Who the Holy Spirit is.  Because He is the Person of the Trinity that we seem to know the least about, He is also the one Who is the most likely to suffer at the hands of revisionist theologians, especially those with misguided feminist sympathies.  All too often He is referred to as “she.” Given how confused we are as to who man is, it is not surprising that we easily fall into error as to who God is.  If we are made in the image and likeness of God then we must understand exactly who God is in order to understand who we are.  Despite the fact that the Trinity is a great mystery of our faith, we can apply reason to revelation in order to develop a deeper relationship with the Holy Spirit.

To know the Holy Spirit, we must first begin with some foundational Trinitarian theology.  Revelation speaks of man unique in all visible creation as being made in God’s image.  Specifically, it is the spiritual powers of our soul, the intellect and will that make us so.  We can conclude that God, Who is pure spirit, has these powers of knowing and loving.  Because He must have the perfection of all-being (in order to be God) we know that He is all-knowing and all-loving.  Because He is eternal, He must have both an eternal object to know and an eternal object to love.  If God is all-knowing then His knowledge, even of Himself, must be perfect.  If God is all loving, then His love must have an object for all eternity and because He is God, He loves this object perfectly.  Are you with me so far?  This is as deep as I am going to go, but there is a key concept from here that must be understood in order to go any further in this.  It is the concept of perfection.

What does it mean to be perfect?  Existence itself is the most basic kind of perfection.  In other words, I can create the perfect wife in my head, but if she doesn’t actually exist then she is not perfect.  What does this have to do with God?  Well, if God has perfect knowledge of even Himself then to be perfect that knowledge must exist as a Person.  This is the second Person of the Trinity, the Son.  He is the “Word Made Flesh”, the Logos.

This Second Person then is the object of the love of the First Person, the Father, for all eternity.  Because the Second Person is also God, He loves the First Person for all eternity.  This love between the Two Persons is also perfect.  This means that the Love exists as a Third Person, the Holy Spirit.

To summarize, God the Son is everything that God the Father knows about Himself.  This means that God the Father pours out all of Himself into God the Son, holding nothing back.  This perfect exchange is then a Person Himself, the Holy Spirit.

So why go into this Thomistic explanation of the Trinity?  Because some will avoid the gender problem of the Holy Spirit by simply gender neutralizing Him.  To call Him an “It” or “Sanctifier” takes away one of the most important aspects of the Trinity—the fact that He is a person.  It puts Him on the level of function and values Him only for His utility.  That is why the Church has from very early on fought this heresy known as Modalism which says the different names for the Persons of the Trinity emphasize the different aspect of the one God.  In other words, the names of Jesus and God simply identify different modes of the same individual.

Along the same lines, some will identify the Trinity as the Creator, the Redeemer and the Sanctifier.  But this speaks of what the Persons do (more accurately what we attribute to them) than Who each Person is.  It is like calling the server in the restaurant “Waitress” or calling her by her name.  One reduces her to her function, the other addresses her as a person.

Holy Spirit Stained Glass

So, if we must give Him a personal pronoun when referring to Him, why must it be He and not She?  In addressing this, we must make an important clarification.  God is not male or female.  That is, the terms “male” and “female” refer only to the biology of God’s creation.  Animals are both male and female and they are not made in God’s image.  What I am saying though is that God, and specifically the Holy Spirit, is fundamentally masculine.

Returning to the question, why must the Holy Spirit be a He?  The short answer is the same one that we swear to every Sunday during the Creed.  The Holy Spirit is masculine because He is the “Lord and giver of Life.”  To see what this means we need look no further than our own bodies.

The man is the giver of life in that he is the initiator and source in procreation.  The woman is receptive and the receiver of life.  In an analogous way, God comes from outside of creation and brings life.  So in order to be the giver of life that comes from without, the Holy Spirit must be referred to as He.  This Divine masculinity is revealed when the Holy Spirit was able to overshadow Mary at the Annunciation and the Word became Flesh.

There is another, more fundamental reason why we refer to the Holy Spirit as He and not she.  In John 15:26, Jesus reveals to us that “when the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father, He will testify to me.”  Christ is the fullest revelation of God and He reveals to us how we are to understand Holy Spirit as He.  To argue otherwise denies the central dogma of the Christian faith that Jesus is the full disclosure of God to man.

But it is also important to acknowledge that there must be femininity in God because there is femininity in creation.  None of what I have said should be interpreted as denying this obvious truth.  And it seems that it is the Holy Spirit Who also reveals this more so than the other two Persons.  Cardinal Ratzinger, echoing the teachings of the Church Fathers said: “Because of the teaching about the Spirit, one can as it were practically have a presentiment of the primordial type of the feminine, in a mysterious, veiled manner, within God Himself.”  In the primordial family of the Trinity it is He Who reveals the aspects of motherhood by serving as the bond of love between Father and Son.  He reveals these most especially through both the bridal and maternal actions of the Church and His unique relationship with Mary (whom St. Maximillian Kolbe calls the “quasi-incarnation” of the Holy Spirit).

Bishop Bruskewitz seems to summarize the issue well: “Unfortunately, in our time, the devil is not only in the details, but also in the pronouns. Because of the onslaught of radical feminism, and other ideologies that are not compatible with the Catholic Faith, there is a great sensitivity to the kind of pronouns used for the Persons of the Most Blessed Trinity.”  Nevertheless we should be faithful both to what is revealed to us by Our Lord in His choice of pronouns in John 14-17 and faithful to the truth of man and woman who are made in God’s image.