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.]

The Blessing!

Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God

            Well, here we stand, at the beginning of a New Year, the Year of our Lord 2012.  On New Year’s Eve people around the world stayed up late to be awake at the moment we changed from 2011 to 2012, made New Year’s resolutions, perhaps kissed loved ones, and hoped that this new year will have fewer sorrows and more joys.  In essence, they were asking God to pour out His blessings upon them and their loved ones.

            The theme of blessing is unmistakable in today’s readings.  Our first reading begins with the Lord telling Moses to tell Aaron, the newly ordained priests of the covenant of Sinai, how to bless the Lord’s people: “‘The LORD bless you and keep you!  The LORD let his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you!  The LORD look upon you kindly and give you peace!’”  And God promises that when the priests do this, the Lord will truly bless them.  And in our responsorial psalm we hear the invocation of God’s blessing.  Even our second reading, though it does not contain the word “blessing,” talks about the true blessing of how “God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”  St. Paul talks to us about our blessing of being made sons and daughters in the Son of God.

            But what is a blessing?  We use the word all the time, but do we understand it?  The word itself comes from two Latin words, bene and dicere, meaning to speak well.  When we bless people, we certainly speak well of them.  Still, when we talk about God’s blessing, we are talking about God whose Word is effective.  A blessing is not just a wish for good things, but when it comes from the Lord, it is an effective way of communicating God Himself through certain words.  Of course, blessings are not magic.  We must be open to the blessing to be able to receive the goodness that it is meant to convey.  But as long as we are open to the blessing, God’s grace is conferred upon us for our benefit.

            I would suggest that for the New Year, as we seek God’s blessing, God’s goodness, that we take this celebration as our starting point.  Today we celebrate Mary, the Holy Mother of God.  We celebrate the human woman, the highest honor of our human family, who said yes to God in all things, and so merited to be the Mother of our Redeemer, Jesus Christ.  And because Jesus is fully God, we rightfully call her the Mother of God, not just the mother of Jesus, as some heretics would do in the fourth century.

            Since Jesus Christ is the greatest blessing, as St. Paul reminds us in our second reading, because by His death and resurrection He has made us heirs to eternal life, and as the true High Priest has truly communicated God’s fullest blessings to us in having the courage to cry out, “Abba, Father!”, we should look to Mary to receive the fullness of these blessings, because it is only through Mary’s yes to God that we were able to receive the greatest blessing: Jesus our Savior.

            Now, do not confuse me.  I am not elevating Mary over Jesus, as if there is a quaternity rather than a Trinity.  We only believe in One God in Three Persons, and Mary is not a part of that Blessed Trinity.  But, we receive the grace of Divine Love in its fullest expression through Mary, and so it is through her that we receive Christ, even in our daily lives.  This is what that pious phrase, “To Jesus, through Mary,” means.  It means that, while we have access to the Father in Christ, we have access to Christ through Mary, His Mother, who is always leading us back to Jesus, and reminding us as she did at the Wedding at Cana, “Do Whatever He Tells You,” the very words we have in our Cana Chapel (here) at St. Thomas.  While our Gospel today spoke of Mary keeping all the mysteries that happened at Jesus’ birth, and reflecting on them in her heart, she does not keep our prayers to herself, but presents them to her Lord and her Son in faithful trust.  And what Son can refuse the prayers of so loving a mother?  Surely the author of the commandment “Honor your father and mother” would not refuse the request of His Mother, especially since her will is now united in heaven with the will of God.

Our Lady of Perpetual Help

            Catholics, for centuries, have turned toward the Mother of God, and since that day that Jesus gave Mary to us as our mother as He told His beloved apostle John, “‘Behold your mother,’” we have not ceased to turn to Blessed Mary, ever-Virgin to plead our cause and to present our prayers to her Son.  We need only think of the rosary, the Angelus, the first Saturdays, the brown scapular, and devotions to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, La Virgen de Guadalupe, Our Lady of Sorrows, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and so many others.  Sadly, many of these faded after Vatican II.  But as Pope Bl. John Paul II reminded us so frequently, that was not the Council’s intent.  With the words of his papal motto: Totus tuus—Totally yours, our late pontiff reminded us of the love we should have for Mary.

            In this New Year, let us be bold in asking God for His blessings.  Let us approach Him as we would a loving Father.  And how many times, when wanting something from our earthly fathers, have we, wisely, asked our earthly mothers to intercede for us so that we may obtain the good things we need and want?  May we make our requests for blessings through the intercession of our Blessed Mother each day, by uniting our lives to Christ through her.  May her name be on our lips as we rise each morning, and in thanksgiving for her assistance as we fall asleep each night.  For me it is as simple as the pious prayer, Mater mea, fiducia mea: my Mother, my confidence at the beginning of the day, and a hymn to Mary, usually the Salve Regina, as I go to bed.  Or we can make our own the Morning Offering, as I do when I put on my scapular: O my God, in union with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer thee the Precious Blood of Jesus from all the altars throughout the world.  O my Jesus, I desire today to gain every indulgence and merit I can, and offer them, together with myself, to Mary Immaculate, that she may best apply them in the interests of thy Most Sacred Heart.   O Precious Blood of Jesus, save us!  Holy Mary, mother of God, mother of the Church, and our mother: pray for us!