The Work of the Spirit

Pentecost

    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  When it comes to bourbon distilleries, most people have the mentality that the older a distillery is, the better bourbon they produce.  I guess the thinking goes that if you’ve been distilling America’s native spirit for a long time, you must have learned something along the way about how to make good bourbon.  For example, my beloved Buffalo Trace claims that they are the oldest continuously operating distillery in America, as there are records that distilling began on the site we now know as Buffalo Trace in 1775, one year before the US gained its independence, and continued to sell bourbon with a special medicinal license during Prohibition.  Evan Williams claims that it is the first commercial distillery in Kentucky, beginning commercial distilling along the banks of the Ohio River in Louisville in 1783.  Old Forester claims the title of oldest continuously sold bourbon and family-owned distillery in the US, going back to the first bottled bourbon in 1870 by George Garvin Brown.  And even if you don’t have longevity, you try to latch on to the “old” mystique.  Bulleit Bourbon brands itself as “Frontier” bourbon, evoking images of the wild west in the 1800s.  But Thomas E. Bulleit, Jr. founded the company in 1987.  

    As we celebrate Pentecost and the gift of the Holy Spirit, we see a similar trend in the Church.  Everyone wants to claim that the Holy Spirit, God, is on their side.  And usually that means that they want divine support for something new that they create.  After all, the Holy Spirit, as we heard in the Acts of the Apostles, so excited the Blessed Mother, the Apostles, and the disciples in the Upper Room to spread the Gospel, that as the Jews heard the Gospel proclaimed in numerous languages, they thought those proclaiming it were drunk.  When the Pharisees drag in the Apostles for proclaiming that Jesus is Lord and tell them to stop saying that salvation comes from Christ, Peter says, “We must obey God rather than men,” a line that Jan Hus, a Bohemian heretic, would use to justify his teaching that no one had to listen to the Church or the pope, only what their interpretation of Scripture was.  Other later protesters like Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, and others who founded breakaway ecclesial communities would claim that the Holy Spirit was the impetus behind their rejection of Catholicism.
    In our own days, we see the unity of the Church and its commitment to fidelity to Christ’s teaching stretched.  On the one hand, some, including members of the Church hierarchy seek to make Church teaching subject to current cultural norms and majority rule (even if the majority is only a vocal minority).  Even while the Holy See said that marriages not recognized by the Church cannot formally be blessed and that ordination is reserved to men, some want simply to change those teachings, and those upon which they are founded, and they appeal to it being a work of the Holy Spirit.  On the other hand is the Society of St. Pius X, which Pope Benedict XVI tried to to reconcile by lifting the excommunications issued by Pope St. John Paul II; and even Pope Francis tried to bring them more into the fold by granting them authority to celebrate Catholic weddings.  The Society now seeks to consecrate their own bishops without a papal mandate, which Rome has clarified would be an act of schism and those who participate and even those who obstinately hold fast to their errors, would be excommunicated.  The Society appeals to the work of the Holy Spirit throughout the ages, to which they believe they are holding firm, while denying that the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council was truly a work of the Holy Spirit.  
    But how do we know what the Holy Spirit does?  Can we have any surety?  Our surety comes from the fact that the Holy Spirit continues the work of Christ in His Mystical Body, the Church, which Christ set up in a particular way, with certain members having authority to speak in Christ’s name, as we hear in John, chapter 20 and elsewhere.  If Church teaching was determined by majority rule, none of us would believe that Christ is consubstantial with the Father, as that heresy, Arianism, was much more popular than true or orthodox Catholicism, which followed the First Ecumenical Council of Nicea.  But, the same authority that grants Nicea I validity, also means that when Pope St. John XXIII convoked Vatican II, and all the bishops gathered in union with him; and when Pope St. Paul VI continued the council after Pope St. John’s death, and confirmed its decrees, we also hold fast to what it teaches dogmatically.  Theology and liturgy cannot be frozen in time, nor can theology and liturgy simply blow in the winds of the spirit of the age.  
    So how do we know that we have the Holy Spirit, given to the Blessed Mother, the Apostles, and the disciples at Pentecost, and given to all followers for two millennia afterwards?  We hold fast to the one Church that Christ founded, which has the Holy Spirit as its catalyst and protector.  Has the Catholic Church always implemented its teachings well?  Has she always been clear in particular statements by the popes or even the holiness of every pope?  No.  In many ways, the implementation of Vatican II, or maybe better said, the hijacking of the implementation of Vatican II, has led to much confusion, even among those who have the charism of helping to lead the Church.  But Vatican II did not teach error or heresy.  If she did, then we ought to leave the Catholic Church, because Christ’s promise to St. Peter that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church has been broken, and a God who claims to be the truth but breaks a promise is not worth following.  Likewise, Church teaching is not a political program that can change when a “new party” gains power.  What has been revealed as dogmatically true is true for all the ages, no matter how unpopular or how difficult following Christ becomes in a particular age.  If Church teaching can change with cultures, then it would be better not to be a part of the Church and just do whatever we felt right moment by moment.  
    But neither of those positions are the work of the Holy Spirit.  How do I know?  Because the Catholic Church has clarified both of those positions as outside what it means to be Catholic.  If the Society of St. Pius X goes forward with its illicit, albeit valid, consecrations of new bishops, to join with them is to participate in schism and jeopardize your immortal soul.  If priests or even bishops encourage ordination of women and/or blessings of unions which the Church does not recognize as marriage, and you join with them, you jeopardize your immortal soul.  The Holy Spirit pushes the Church, and the work of God sometimes does surprise us, just like Pentecost surprised the followers of Christ and the Jews in Jerusalem.  But the Holy Spirit does not work against the Church.  We must obey God rather than men.  But make sure it’s God you’re following, and not just your own will, or the will of other men.  [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]

Don't Forget the Holy Spirit!

Sixth Sunday of Easter

No one likes to be ignored.  But if there’s one Person of the Blessed Trinity that we often ignore, it’s the Holy Spirit.  We tend to always remember the Father in our prayers, especially the Our Father, or sometimes we’ll just refer to Him as God.  Jesus, as the one who took flesh and was our means of being reconnected to the Father is usually at the front of our minds as well.  But the Holy Spirit tends to get left out.  How many prayers do we being with some form of: Dear Holy Spirit…?  Probably not many, if any, while we are very comfortable with beginning prayers with: Dear God… or Heavenly Father… or Lord Jesus.  

It’s important, then, that in these last few Sundays of our Easter Season, the Church really focuses in on the Holy Spirit.  Of course, every Mass we begin with the Holy Spirit, and He’s mentioned in the Gloria, and our opening prayers always say “in the unity of the Holy Spirit.”  But the readings in these weeks also remind us that the Holy Spirit is God and guides the Church in a special way since the Ascension of Jesus.

Our first reading reminds us of the role of the Holy Spirit in guiding what we are to believe as Catholics and how we are to live as Catholics.  Having discussed whether or not the Gentiles (the non-Jews) had to be circumcised and follow Judaic laws, and with the testimony of St. Peter, St. James sends a message to the Jews who had become Christians about what is required for Gentiles to become Christians.  And he writes specifically, that it was “‘“the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us not to place on you any burden beyond these necessities, namely, to abstain from meat sacrificed to idols, from blood, from meats of strangled animals, and from unlawful marriage.”’”  It was not simply a group of old men getting together and thinking of the most pragmatic thing to do.  It was the Holy Spirit, the love shared between the Father and the Son, who guided the apostles to decide that Gentiles did not have to become Jewish and follow those laws to become Christians.  In other words, every time you eat a cheese burger or bacon (which Jews cannot do because it’s contrary to kosher laws), you should thank the Holy Spirit.

But the Holy Spirit did not stop guiding the Church with this decision.  Throughout the 2,000 year history of the Church, the Holy Spirit has continued to guide the successor of St. Peter, the Pope, and the successors of the apostles, the bishops, in making decisions about what we are to believe and how we are to live.  Some of those teachings are crystallized in the Creed.  But also in all the 21 Ecumenical Councils, from Nicaea I in AD 325 to Vatican II in the 1960s, and even in Papal pronouncements in between, the Holy Spirit has continued to teach the Church everything and remind the Church of what Jesus told us.  He has guided us on how many books to have in the Bible; who Jesus is; how many Sacraments were instituted by Jesus; Mary’s Immaculate Conception and Assumption; that only men can be ordained priests; that marriage is between one man and one woman for life; all these are part of Jesus’ words, which the Holy Spirit has helped us to understand and which the Holy Spirit has guided the Pope and the bishops to proclaim as being what is necessary to be believed if we wish to truly call ourselves Catholic.  The Holy Spirit and the successors of the apostles, the foundation of the heavenly Jerusalem, work together to continue Jesus’ teachings into new times and new cultures.

But the work of the Holy Spirit is not limited to the Pope and bishops.  The Holy Spirit wants to give us life.  He helps us to understand what is right and wrong in our conscience.  We receive the Holy Spirit in baptism, and a new gift in the Sacrament of Confirmation, to help us as individuals know what is God’s will in our daily actions and in the major decisions of life: what vocation we should choose, how to use our gifts and talents in a job, how to educate and raise our family.  Of course, the Holy Spirit would never contradict Himself, and we as individuals do not have the gift of infallibility, as the bishops in union with the Pope, and even the Pope by himself on matters of faith and morals has.  So if our conscience is ever telling us to do something that is contrary to what the Church officially teaches as to what we need to believe or how we need to live, we should do some major research on what the Church teaches and why, because it is more likely to be right than what we think our conscience is saying.  But the Holy Spirit is in us, too, and wants to make our living of the Gospel a joy-filled experience.  The Holy Spirit wants to give us the power to say yes to God and no to our fallen nature and to evil.  And by virtue of our Baptism, all we need to do is ask the Holy Spirit to strengthen us.  

It may not come as naturally, but may we also pray to the Holy Spirit, especially when we are making choices.  We can pray in our own words, in conversation with the Holy Spirit, or we can also use that wonderful prayer to the Holy Spirit that we said as a Diocese a few years ago, and which I will lead today.  Please join in if you remember: Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faith, and enkindle in them the fire of your love.  Send forth your spirit, and they shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth.  O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that, by the same Holy Spirit, we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations.  Through Christ our Lord.  Amen.