Sermons from the Latins/Sermon 32
Pentecost Sunday.
The Holy Ghost.
SYNOPSIS.
Ex. : The difficulty of the subject.
I. What is the Holy Ghost? : i. " Holy Spirit." 2. Human mind. 3. Difference.
II. He is God : 1. From Scripture, a. Arian difficulty. 3. Three modes of production.
III. Objections: 1. How "sent"? 2. Words of Amos. 3. Wresting the Scriptures.
IV. Descent: 1. Special coming. 2. Necessity of gifts. 3. Knowledge, tongues, miracles, love.
Per.: 1. Special necessity 01 love, 2. Fortitude and patience. 3. Invocation.
SERMON.
"O the depths of the knowledge of God!" exclaims St. Paul in the presence of the mystery of the Trinity. " Who shall declare His generation? " asks Isaias, speaking of the birth of the Word from the Father. And, Brethren, not less incomprehensible, because not less divine, is our subject to-day, the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son. It is one of these heavenly mysteries unfathomable even to the angelic intelligences, altogether above and beyond the range of human reason, and known to mortals only through faith in the revelations of God. May He who can give speech to the dumb and render eloquent the tongues of even little ones, may He empower me to treat as worthily as mortal may of His nature, of His glorious descent upon the Apostles, of the wondrous gifts with which He endowed them; and may He give you to understand the means whereby you may worthily receive and fittingly and lastingly entertain so august and so imposing a guest.
What then, Brethren, is the Holy Ghost? He is God, coequal and consubstantial with the other persons of the Trinity, and yet, as the third person of that Trinity, He is really distinct from the Father and the Son. The name " Holy Ghost " or " Holy Spirit " might with equal truth be applied to either the Father or the Son, but because the third person proceeds from them both as from a single principle, because He is common to them both, being the love of the Father for the Son and of the Son for the Father, therefore that name which is common to all three is rightly appropriated by Him who is the link that binds the universe to God and God to God in the bonds of benevolence and love. If one might without irreverence seek to still farther penetrate the secrets of the Divinity, a study of the human mind will afford a shadowy concept of the Blessed Trinity. The soul, the highest type of creature known to us, naturally bears the strongest semblance to the Creator. Now, the mind, in studying an object, produces within itself an image of that object, and around and over that image, if the object be a lovable one, the will fondly hovers and is led on thereby to the pursuit and the enjoyment of the object itself. So it is in a measure with the Divinity. The Father, contemplating His own all-perfect nature, begets an image thereof, and that image being no less a substantial reality than His only-begotten Son, there is produced between them by the divine will a third being, the Spirit of love, the Holy Ghost. For there is this difference between the operations of the human mind and the divine, that the image and the love of an object produced by the intellect and will of the former are as unsubstantial and transitory as a mirrored reflection or a passing emotion, but not so in the latter, for whatever falls within the radius of the Divinity, though it be in a measure distinct from God, must still be substantially God HimseK. God, the Son, therefore, is the intelligence of the Father, by whom and in whom, as in an exemplar, the Father contemplates His own infinite perfections and their numberless imitations in the universe of creatures, and God the Holy Ghost is the love that results from this contemplation, and reaching out clasps the entire realm of beings to the bosom of their Creator.
Brethren, it was precisely because the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son and by them is sent upon Christ's followers that that controversy arose which called in question His divinity, and for centuries rent in twain the Christian Church. For, argued the Arians, as the person sent, such as a servant or soldier, is always inferior to the sender, his master or commander, so the Holy Ghost, though He be first of creatures, is still but a creature and in no sense equal to the Father and the Son. Nevertheless, Brethren, the Scriptures emphatically assert that the Holy Ghost is God. Only God is everywhere, and " whither," says the Psalmist, "shall I go from Thy omnipresent Spirit? " Only God is omniscient, and says St. Paul: " The Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God." Only God is omnipotent, and, prays the Royal Prophet: " Send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created." To have a temple of worship is God's exclusive prerogative, but, says St. Paul: " Know ye not that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit? " To " speak by the mouth of His holy prophet " was surely peculiar to the Lord God of Israel, but St. Peter says, " those holy men of God spoke inspired by the Holy Ghost." Finally, nothing could be plainer than St. Peter's assertion of this truth when, having detected the duplicity of Ananias, he said to him: "Ananias, why hath Satan tempted thy heart that thou shouldst lie to the Holy Ghost? Thou hast not Ked to men, but to God." What, therefore, of the Arian argument? Certainly, when it is a question of the exercise of authority, the sender is necessarily superior to the person sent, but there is another manner of sending forth, by production, namely, as when the sun puts forth its rays and the trees their blossoms and fruit, and here is involved no inequality, for rays and flowers and fruit are by nature identical with the principle from which they emanate. Such, in some sort, is the emanation of the Son from the Father, and of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son. But here again the heretics sought occasion to attack the divinity of the third person, arguing that as God produces by generation and creation only, therefore the Holy Ghost, who is certainly not the begotten of the Father, must of necessity be a mere creature. But our holy faith maintains that besides the generation of the Word and the creation of the universe, there is in God a third productive operation by which the Holy Spirit proceeds from the single will of the Father and the Son. Not less productive than the divine intellect is the divine will. The Son, therefore, proceeds from the Father alone by generation; the Holy Ghost from both Father and Son by mutual love, and the universe of angels and men and things from Father, Son and Holy Ghost by the act of creation.
But, Brethren, since God is everywhere, how can the Holy Ghost be said to have been sent into the world or upon the Apostles? God is indeed everywhere, but it is possible for the divine persons to begin to exist under a new aspect where they did not previously so exist. For example, God the Son, as St. John says, " was in the world, but the world knew Him not," but in the plenitude of time the Father sent Him, made under the law, born of a woman, so that the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us in an altogether new and extraordinary manner. So, too, the Holy Spirit. When an infidel or heretic is converted, the Holy Ghost comes to him under the form of faith and hope and charity. When a sinner repents, the Spirit of God begins to dwell in him by grace and its accompanying virtues. That is why these virtues are by Isaias called spirits, " the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and fortitude, the spirit of knowledge and piety, and the spirit of the fear of the Lord," and St. Paul adds " that though there be diversities of graces, it is the same spirit who worketh all in all."
Brethren, in the presence of this doctrine so plainly scriptural, so consistent with reason, the arguments of the enemies of the Holy Ghost seem absurdly puerile. Especially childish was their attempt to disprove His divinity from the words of the prophet Amos: " He [God] formeth the thunder and createth the spirit." The passage being the prophet's appeal to Israel to return to God through fear of His greatness, he adduces a thunderstorm as an example of the awful power of Him whom the winds and the seas obey. The force of the objection, therefore, consists in a misinterpretation of the word " spirit " which here evidently signifies the winds. It is a fair example of the devices to which heretics resort to pervert Scripture and combat the truth. Their method is to wrest Scripture into conformity with their own ideas, and when this is impossible, to reject altogether the more stubborn passages. Speaking with the Samaritan woman, Christ said: " The Spirit is God, and they that adore Him must adore Him in spirit and in truth," and although the text may more correctly be quoted of the divine nature, meaning that God is a spirit, etc., still the Arians in their frantic efforts to prove that the Spirit is not God, totally erased these words from their Bibles. The Lutherans adopted a similar method in dealing with Machabees and St. James, where they say respectively: " It is a holy and a wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they be freed from their sins," and "faith without works is dead;" and Our Lord's words: " This is My body," were by the Calvinists either changed so as to read: "This signifies My body," or else altogether rejected and expunged. Thus do they wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction, for, says St. Ambrose, " their punishment is that while they are erasing the words of truth from the Book of God, God is erasing their names from the Book of Life."
Brethren, ten days after the Ascension of Our Lord the Holy Ghost, as Christ had promised, descended on the Apostles. At the creation, the Spirit of God brooded over the waters and brought order out of chaos. During the intervening centuries, He, by virtue of His divinity, had filled with His presence the whole world. He had even vouchsafed at various times special manifestations of Himself, as when He appeared to the wandering Israelites as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, or hovered as a dove over Christ in the Jordan, or passed like a breath from Christ to His Apostles, or in mortal guise chanted a psalm before Eliseus, or instructed the centurion Cornelius, or in silence overshadowed the Virgin. But on that first Pentecost Day, His coming meant more than all these — He came then to renew in very truth the face of the earth, and to remain with men all days to the end of time. Since the Ascension the Apostles had been hiding in Jerusalem through fear of the Jews, and being all together, " suddenly there came a sound, as of a mighty wind, and there appeared parted tongues, as it were of fire, which alighted upon every one of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with divers tongues." The manner of His coming is significant of knowledge, zeal, the gift of tongues and the power of miracles, symbolized respectively in the brightness and heat and form of the falling fire, and in the rushing sound of its descent. The Apostles as the preachers of the new dispensation, had especial need of these four gifts. An unlettered preacher is a blind man leading the blind, and both are sure to fall into the pit. A minister, learned, but without zeal or virtue, either abandons his flock like the hireling, or scatters them by the scandal of his life. How necessary in a preacher is the gift of speech you know full well — you on whom we inflict our clumsy harangues. And, lastly, the power of miracles is God's seal on the credentials of His earthly ambassadors. Prior to the foundation of the Christian Church, the Synagogue had been His duly accredited representative, so that it was of the first importance that the authority of the Apostles should be so plainly certified to as to command the respect and submission of both Jews and Gentiles. But the same necessity for miracleworking does not exist to-day, except, perhaps, on the part of those who are continually introducing new forms of belief. To ask the Church to prove her divinity by miracles at this late day is unreasonable, especially in those individuals and nations who have eagerly accepted that manifestly fraudulent Christianity, Protestantism.
Brethren, the knowledge communicated by the Holy Spirit to the Apostles comprised all the mysteries and truths of our faith. " The heavens show forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of His hands," and from a study of visible things philosophy came to a knowledge of the invisible things of God. But the Lord leads the just man by direct ways and shows him the kingdom of God, and hence it was that through the influence of the Holy Ghost more wisdom was infused into the Apostles in a moment than all the philosophers laboriously and for centuries had been able to acquire. Natural truths, however, did not most probably constitute a part of these revelations, except indeed such as were necessary in the accomplishment of their apostolic mission, for, says St. Augustine, " the Spirit designed to make them not mathematicians, but Christians." The Apostles had said to Christ: "Lord, we know not whither Thou goest, and how are we to learn the way?" and through the coming of the Paraclete, He, as He promised, sufficiently enlightened them so that they might be able " to give knowledge of salvation to His people unto the remission of their sins."
The second gift was the gift of tongues. On that first Pentecost Day, there were in Jerusalem representatives of all civilized peoples, and each was amazed at hearing the Apostles address him in his native tongue. Not that they spoke Greek, for ex ample, more fluently than Demosthenes, or more polished Latin than Cicero, but they received the faculty of speaking the languages as they are ordinarily spoken, and as though they were their own, and that, too, in a moment. " Blessed is the man whom Thou teachest, O Lord, for verily Thy tongue is as the pen of a writer writing rapidly! " Whether there be question of the imparting of truth or the learning of a language, there is a wider difference between our method and God's than there is between the work of a pen and of a printing-press. Our process is slow and labored and our results defective, but the works of the Lord are perfect.
Thirdly, they received the power of miracles. By a word of his mouth, we are told, St. Peter slew Ananias and Saphira for their duplicity, and not only did he raise Tabitha from the dead, but even by the touch of his shadow he cured all manner of diseases. So, too, the other Apostles. Nevertheless, they indulged in no arbitrary exercise of this power, but only in obedience to the promptings of the Spirit. St. Paul, for instance, did not use his miraculous power for the healing of his own wounds, and in writing to Timothy, he counsels him to have recourse to natural remedies; not to drink water, but to use a little wine for his stomach's sake and his manifold infirmities.
Brethren, lastly, and most of all, the Holy Ghost infused into the Apostles such intense zeal and love for God and humanity that, when their time came, not one of them hesitated to give the ultimate proof of charity by laying down his life for God and the brethren. Previous to His coming they had been weak and timid men; Peter had trembled at the voice of a maid and thrice denied his Lord, and the whole band was hiding for fear of the Jews, but now, as the plastic clay is by fire hardened into enduring brick, so the Apostles by the fire of divine love were made suitable to be the foundations of the Church of God. They who before shrank from ridicule and insult, now rejoiced that they were found worthy to suffer persecution and torture and death for the name of Jesus.
Brethren, it matters little whether or not we be learned, whether or not we be eloquent, whether or not we be miracle-workers, but it is a matter of supreme importance that we possess a goodly measure of love for God and our neighbor. " God is love," says St. John, and his meaning is that charity is of all the most characteristic gift of the Holy Ghost, the most infallible indication of His indwelling presence, the stem which produces and supports all the other gifts and fruits of the Holy Ghost. But how are we to know whether or not we possess this precious gift? Brethren, the natural outcome of charity is an ideal Christian life, but probably as sure indications as any other of its presence are fortitude and patience. "True charity casteth out fear," as we have seen it do in the case of the Apostles. When you saw your neighbor offending against the laws of his conscience and of God, did you admonish him? No. Why not? Because you feared his displeasure. Ah! but true charity casteth out fear. How often do you approach the sacraments? Once a year. How often do you eat? Three or four times a day. But why not refresh your starving soul more frequently? Afraid lest men consider you effeminate or a hypocrite. Ah! but true charity casteth out fear. How many times did you refuse invitations to the theatre or the tavern; how often did you visit the widows and orphans to comfort them in their affliction? Seldom if ever. Why? For fear of being called mean or unmanly. Ah! but true charity casteth out fear. Again, charity is patient, beareth all things, endureth all things. Perhaps your health is poor, your home unhappy, your business not prosperous, are you resigned? Alas! how rare is patience! how rare is true charity! We bear the world's crosses uncomplainingly; we even voluntarily fast and pray and give alms, but beneath the tribulations sent us by God, we grumble and groan. Yet, " whom the Lord loveth, He chastiseth," but we cannot, will not see it. Rejecting the doctor of our souls, we undertake to prescribe for ourselves, and in the end we find that he who is his own physician hath a fool for his patient. Brethren, may the Spirit of love come to you to-day; may He strengthen you to bear humbly and patiently the inevitable but saving trials of your earthly career, and may He impart to you the courage to do ever, and everywhere, your whole duty to yourself, your neighbor, and your God.