Following Thursday’s feast of the Ascension (forty days after Easter Sunday), we are now on the approach towards Pentecost Sunday (fifty days after Passover/Easter). That’s what Pentecost means : fifty days in weeks. And our readings now relate to the promise of the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Who will animate the Church while Christ remains in the beyond, representing humanity to His heavenly Father. Here’s an image of Christ is His Ascension, from the letter of S. Paul to the Hebrews:
“Christ has taken His place as our high priest, to win us blessings that still lie in the future. He makes use of a greater, a more complete tabernacle, which human hands never fashioned; it does not belong to this order of creation at all. It is His own blood, not the blood of goats and calves, that has enabled Him to enter, once for all, into the sanctuary; the ransom He has won lasts for ever. The blood of bulls and goats, the ashes of a heifer sprinkled over men defiled, have power to hallow them for every purpose of outward purification; and shall not the blood of Christ, who offered Himself, through the Holy Spirit, as a victim unblemished in God’s sight, purify our consciences, and set them free from lifeless observances, to serve the living God?”
The letter to the Hebrews, 9: 11-14 [link]
What does this guidance of the Holy Spirit imply? Let’s have a look through the readings. First, the gospel reading. Here we have a fragment of what scripture scholars call the ‘high-priestly prayer’ which Christ the High-priest makes on behalf of primarily the Apostles, but then on behalf of us all. The theme is unity. He wants us to be united, to be one in our profession of faith, but also one in our love for one another.
“‘Holy Father, keep them true to Thy Name, Thy gift to Me, that they may be one, as We are one. As long as I was with them, it was for Me to keep them true to Thy Name, Thy gift to Me; and I have watched over them, so that only one has been lost, he whom perdition claims for its own, in fulfilment of the scripture. But now I am coming to Thee; and while I am still in the world I am telling them this, so that My joy may be theirs, and reach its full measure in them. I have given them Thy message, and the world has nothing but hatred for them, because they do not belong to the world, as I, too, do not belong to the world.'”
Gospel of S. John, 17: 11-14 [link]
Remember that, in the gospel fragment last weekend, He had said that we should love each other as He loves us, with an intimate self-sacrificial love of the type of married friendship. This unites us, just as married love unites husband and wife. And if we can love each other like this, we are true to His Name. Let’s go on through the gospel reading: the Christian carries in his or her heart this word of God the Father – this seed of the Gospel – which makes them hated by ‘the world’ – that is to say, the spirit of disunity and hatred. And, very significantly, it separates us out of the world, so that in the words of Christ, we are living in the world, but do not belong to it. We belong rather to Him.
The whole idea about ‘staying true’ to Christ, if I haven’t yet mentioned the Holy Spirit yet, concerns this third Person of the Godhead, the power that enables this indwelling of the word of God within Christians, thus uniting us to Christ and separating us out of the world, ‘consecrated in the truth,’ as the Lord says. The Holy Spirit is love, that very sacrificial love of God living within us. And so, we must live in love, and S. John continues to tell us about love in our second reading this weekend.
“Beloved, if God has shewn such love to us, we too must love one another. No man has ever seen God; but if we love one another, then we have God dwelling in us, and the love of God has reached its full growth in our lives. This is our proof that we are dwelling in Him, and He in us; He has given us a share of His own Spirit. We Apostles have seen for ourselves, and can testify, that the Father sent out His Son to be the Redeemer of the world, and where a man acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwells in Him, and He in God; we have learned to recognise the love God has in our regard, to recognise it, and to make it our belief. God is love; he who dwells in love dwells in God, and God in him.”
First letter of S. John, 4: 11-16 [link]
Consider how the mercy we ask for ourselves from God is joined to the mercy we show to others at the end of the Lord’s Prayer? Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us… That show of mercy is a result of the love/charity that we have for others. So John says, if we love one another, then God will complete His love in us. Pray for the fullness of charity in your hearts, and see if He doesn’t honour His promise to us, sending us the Holy Spirit in all His fullness, that we may thus have God dwelling within us.
Does any of this sound rather abstract? It should be very practical. We should be able to look about us and see in the faces of the men and women around us a humanity in need – people we can in some way help or assist, if not in physical need, then in spiritual and psychological need. This is not the easiest demand of Christ, but it is essential: reaching out to others is not very easy and full of risk, for all types of love involve taking risks. The Lord Himself takes risks with us, knowing that not all of us will accept Him in love, and the great majority of men and women will reject Him, deeply wounding the Sacred Heart.
The last note I want to make about the weekend’s readings concerns the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church with respect to governance. We should constantly pray for good and holy priests, and good and holy bishops, to carry on the sacramental work of the Church through the ages, here in our localities and everywhere else. In the first reading, we hear of how the Apostles after the Ascension of OL moved to reestablish the full number of the Twelve Apostles, after the suicide of Judas the traitor. In the absence of the Lord Himself, the college of Apostles appoints this man S. Matthias to fill the gap, and to stand with them around the BVM as, a few days later, at the end of the Pentecost festival, the heavens burst forth and the Spirit of God confirmed the election of Matthias and sent the Twelve out to convert the world. Now consider that the gospel reading has the prayer of Christ for primarily the Twelve Apostles before He mentions the rest of us as those given the gospel by the Twelve:
“‘Thou hast sent Me into the world on Thy errand, and I have sent them into the world on My errand; and I dedicate Myself for their sakes, that they too may be dedicated through the truth. It is not only for them that I pray; I pray for those who are to find faith in Me through their word; that they may all be one; that they too may be one in Us, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee; so that the world may come to believe that it is Thou who hast sent Me.'”
Gospel of S. John, 17: 18-21 [link]
Catholic Louth and Mablethorpe 