Come holy spirit – 2

By Msgr. Cantley

A competent artist was engaged to refurbish some of Michelangelo’s paintings. The restorer spent what seemed to his patron an exorbitant amount of time reading about the original artist and his times, examining the pigments of the paints used in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and microscopically studied the artist’s painting strokes. Anxious to get the work accomplished, the patron complained to the restorer that he was delaying too long, and ordered him to get on with the work. The restorer responded that he had agreed to restore the work of Michelangelo and not to presume to over-paint the original artist or superimpose his own talent on that of one of the world’s greatest painters. He threatened to quit if not given the time to get to know Michelangelo almost as well as Michelangelo knew himself and his intentions. Fortunately the patron listened.

Pope John Paul II reminds us[1] that the Church is not the originator of its moral teaching. It has received inalienable truths and absolute moral principles from God. Like the restorer of a painting, the Church has to search the mind of God, thankfully with the aid of the Holy Spirit, to know this teaching better and apply moral principles to an ever changing historical context. Though the world often thinks the Church intransigent and insensitive, the Church has no option but to be faithful to what God has revealed. The human articulation of the moral law is as limited as any human locution intrinsically is. The Church relies on the aid of the Spirit to penetrate the mystery of human existence and to apply unchanging moral principles to changing human situations. Speaking of the Church’s articulation of moral norms, the Holy Father states: “The Church is in no way the author or the arbiter of this norm. In obedience to the truth which is Christ, whose image is reflected in the nature and dignity of the human person, the Church interprets the moral norm and proposes it to all people of good will, without concealing its demands of radicalness and perfection”.[2]

Compassion is never shown by hiding, narrowing or weakening the truth. Only the whole truth can free us to be the persons we were intended to be. The word “compassion” means to suffer with, and it demands that in presenting a difficult way, the means to its accomplishment are also offered. The Holy Father is aware of this when he writes: “Still, a clear and forceful presentation of moral truth can never be separated from a profound and heartfelt respect, born of that patient and trusting love which man always needs along his moral journey, a journey frequently wearisome on account of difficulties, weakness, and painful situations”.[3]

If moral vision has to be sharpened, so too must our vision of the Kingdom of God become clearer to us. Pope John Paul II reminds us that while spoken of frequently, the Kingdom is often misrepresented. He writes: “..there are ideas about salvation and mission which…are focused [exclusively] on humankind’s earthly needs. In this view, the Kingdom tends to become something completely human and secularized; what counts are programs and struggles for a liberation which is socio-economic, political, and even cultural, but within a horizon that is closed to the transcendent”.[4] Human values and concerns are significant to the Kingdom, but they are not the be-all and the end-all that some approaches seem to think them to be: “The Kingdom of God…is not of the world…is not from this world (cf.Jn.18:26)”.[5] Pope John Paul II goes on to remind us that there are conceptions of the role of the Church that rightly stress its activity in fostering peace, justice, brotherhood, freedom and in seeking dialogue between peoples, cultures and religions for the mutual enrichment of society and all of its members. Laudable as all of these are, they are not the whole story. They fail to focus on Christ. The Kingdom, however, must be Christocentric: explicitly for those fortunate enough to have faith in Christ; implicitly for those who have never heard of Him. There is no salvation apart from Christ, and no grace the Holy Spirit does not impart. “The Kingdom cannot be detached either from Christ or from the Church”.[6]

The Church is not yet the fullness of the Kingdom, but it is indissolubly united with it. The Church, endowed with the Spirit Who dwells within it, enlivens it with gifts and charisms, sanctifies, guides and constantly renews it, is God’s gracious gift to us.

We often speak of the “human family”. It really exists and has a global as well as a more local identity. Yet, it is an abstraction. As a local phenomenon, that which most of us experience, it provides the paradigm from which we extrapolate an image and description of the larger phenomenon. The same can be said of the Church. There is a Church universal. It is real, but often seems abstract since it is not what we readily experience. Rather, for us the Church is often the local parish. It is there that we experience Church most immediately. It is in the local parish we are baptized, confirmed, receive the Eucharist for the first time, where we are absolved of our sins, worship with the family of the parish, are educated – if we are lucky enough to experience it in the parish school, are married and from which our loved ones are buried. There was a time when the parish was so much part of our consciousness that the answer to the questions “where did you grow up?” frequently elicited the name of our parish. Now, with our lives absorbed into so highly mobile a society, we may change parishes frequently, but wherever it is it is still our most immediate experience of Church. Ideally, the parish is not just buildings or territory, but a “family of faith”, a fellowship on fire with the Spirit of God. It is a Eucharistic community for it is the Eucharist – in its celebration and the presence of Christ in the Tabernacle – that makes the parish the focal point of faith life in celebration. If this really happens, the bond of faith extends beyond the parish to the diocese and ultimately to the Church, world wide.

It is in the parish the sacraments are celebrated. The Holy Spirit who energizes the Church acts in the sacraments. Pope John Paul II assures us “The Church is the visible dispenser of the sacred signs, while the Holy Spirit acts in them as the invisible dispenser of the life which they signify. Together with the Spirit, Christ Jesus is present and acting”.[7] The Eucharist is the summit toward which all our faith aspirations are directed, and the font from which all grace flows. From it we receive the gift of God’s Spirit: “That new life, which involves the bodily glorification of the crucified Christ, becomes an efficacious sign of the new gift granted to humanity, the gift that is the Holy Spirit, through whom the divine life that the Father has in himself and gives to the Son (see John 5:26; 1 John 5:11) is communicate to all men who are united with Christ”.[8]

The wonder of the Eucharist can never be articulated adequately or fully explored in human terms. There is a story told in the life of John Vianney that the Saint once noticed a man who visited the Church every evening on the way from the fields to his home. It was a prolonged visit, but the Saint never noted the man’s lips moving in prayer. He asked what the man said to the Lord, and received the marvelous reply “I just look at Him, and He looks at me”. Certainly, most of us need words, but mere words never exhaust the meaning of the Eucharist, and the more sophisticated our theology and words to express it, the more we may think we have a greater handle on the meaning of the mystery. That man possibly had more insight than the greater of our theologians. He had a real and palpable sense of the presence of Christ.

The Eucharist is born of love. It re-presents the ultimate statement of love – One who is willing to lay down His life for His friends. The marvel is that we are those friends. To speak of love is to speak of the Holy Spirit, the Love between the Father and the Son. To receive the Eucharist worthily is to be transformed into the image of the Son whose body it is we receive, by which we a re nourished and become more deeply the dwelling place of Trinity. If we could but appreciate that reality and keep it ever conscious in our minds and the forefront of out thoughts the likelihood of sinful separation would be far less.