A bishop and a priest often meets a man, a good man, but one to whom God has not given the priceless gift of faith. That man will evaluate Jesus Christ. He will be fair to Him within the limitations of his own human judgment. Christ was a great thinker and a holy man, he will say, equating Him with Buddha, Confucius, Socrates and Plato. Saint Paul, however, tells us:

It is only through the Holy Spirit that anyone can say, Jesus is the Lord. - 1Cor. 12:3 -

They who have not the Spirit call Him "a great man" "a teacher" "a master"; but to see Him as the Lord of heaven and earth, as the Son of the living God, comes only through the Holy Spirit.

This is being so, may it not be that our failure to read the Sacred Scriptures, to preach Redemption, to inspire converts, to give better spiritual direction and to convert sinners is because we have not sufficiently pondered and absorbed the counsels given us by the Lord at the Last Supper?

Why do some bishops, priests feel uncomfortable in the Presence of God? Is it because of an excessive love of comfort, a spirit of envy and jealousy, a pleasure in their status as clerics, a kind of sword-activism in place of prayer and watching? May this want of the Spirit of Christ not explain a reluctance to appear more often and more joyously in His Eucharistic Presence? Would not a person who hated mathematics be unhappy at a convention of mathematicians? The soul that hated truth (to speak in inadequate human terms) would suffer more in heaven than in hell; analogically speaking, the want of the Spirit of Christ makes bishop and priest shrink from His companionship.

Tryst there must be, if friends will meet and journey together. - Amos 3:3 -

The bishop and priest must not postpone this union with the Holy Spirit to a more convenient season - Acts 24:25 - If he neglects growth, decay sets in. There comes a time when it is too late to repent, even to ask for a drop of water to "cool my tongue." - Luke 16:24 -

Baptism makes every Christian a new creature and an ambassador of heaven. Ordination intensifies these spiritual attributes in the priest. But, though priest dispense holiness, priests are not automatically holy. It is the Spirit Who makes them more priestly day by day because He takes the things of Christ and reveals them to the priest, bringing to remembrance all the words of Christ. - John 16:14; 14:26 - Becoming a holy bishop and priest is not completed the day of ordination, nor do the blessings of the Spirit flow to us without great effort on our part. Bishops and priests are "workers together with God." We stand in need of knowledge if we are to communicate it to others, if we are to bring our bodily appetites into subjection - 1Cor. 7:29-31 - and if we are to be patient under the pressure of work, loving every human being with that charity which flows from the consciousness that Our Lord died for him too. All these qualities are progressive, and it was one who himself had made that uphill fight who best expressed what it means.

And you too have to contribute every effort on your own part, crowning your faith with virtue, and virtue with enlightenment with continence, and continence with endurance, and endurance with holiness, and holiness with brotherly love, and brotherly love with charity. Such gifts, when they are yours in full measure, will make you quick and successful pupils, reaching ever closer knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ; he who lacks them is no better than a blind man feeling his way about; his old sins have been purged away, and he has forgotten it. Bestir yourselves then brethren, ever more eagerly, to ratify God's calling and choice of you by a life well lived. - 2Peter 1:5-10 -

Every priest, though ordained to be a Peter, retains within him the frailty of the Simon-nature. Saint Paul describes the resulting civil war between Peter and Simon.

Inwardly, I applaud God's disposition, but I observe another disposition in my lower self which raises war against the disposition of my conscience, and so I am handed over as a captive to that disposition towards sin which my lower self contains. Pitiable creature that I am, who is to set me free from a nature thus doomed to death? Nothing else than the grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. If I am left to myself my conscience is at God's disposition, but my natural powers are at the disposition of sin. - Romans 7:22-25 -

Even before Paul, Plato had observed that there is a war in each of us against himself. Anyone who does not take up the sword against that lower nature is destroyed by it. Sin first takes possession of the flesh, and, once entrenched there, it attacks the mind and finally displaces it from its position of authority.

A man may have priestly powers and yet be governed by nature, for the grace of ordination does not destroy the flesh.

To live the life of nature is to think the thoughts of nature; to live the life of the Spirit is to think the thoughts of the Spirit; and natural wisdom brings only death, whereas the wisdom of the Spirit brings life and peace. - Romans 8:5-6 -

The priest is like a mountain climber. The Holy Spirit bids him go higher, but below him are the abysses. What the Holy Spirit does in the soul of a priest is not only to make him more aware of the conflict within himself, but also to make him more conscious of sin. Divine grace does not so act as to prevent a man absolutely from sinning, but the Spirit takes the fun out of it. It is not possible for a priest to love a human being with the full powers of his soul precisely because he has already fallen in love with the Perfect - namely, Christ - through His Spirit. All other love is dissatisfying and bitter.

A sin committed by a priest, consequently, pains him more intensely than does the same sin to one not a priest. This is because of the greater gift of the Spirit. Imagine two men marrying two shrews who were identical in their disgruntled nature. One man had enjoyed the love of a beautiful and devoted wife who died; the other was being married for the first time. Which of the two suffers more? Obviously, the one who knew before the better love. So with the priest. Having enjoyed the ecstasy of the Spirit of Love, he can never be satisfied with human substitutes.

At the Last Supper, Our Lord told those He had chosen as His first priests how the Spirit would intensify the conflict.

He will come, and it will be for Him to prove the world wrong, about sin... - John 16:8 -

No man really understands sin who thinks of it merely as the breaking of the law. This is a defect that results from basing moral theology exclusively upon the Commandments. To do so is to develop in the young an attitude that makes them ask, "Is it a mortal or a venial sin? How far can I go without committing grievous sin?" The full understanding of sin comes only through the Holy Spirit, and until He enlightens the soul, it is blind to our sinfulness. No matter how great our powers of reasoning, we can produce real conviction of sin only through the Spirit.

But what does the Spirit do in the soul? Our Lord Jesus said the Holy Spirit would convict men of sin because "they have not found belief in Me." - John 16:9 - By not believing in Him, men crucified Him. Hence, it is the Crucifix that brings to the soul the profound consciousness of guilt. It becomes for each his autobiography. The skin of Christ is the parchment, His Blood the ink, the nails the pen. There we see written the story of our life. This close relationship between the sense of sin and the Crucifix enabled Saint Peter to win three thousand souls for the Lord on the day of Pentecost. He reminded his hearers that they had crucified Christ. - Acts 2:36 - To sin against faith thus means to refuse to believe in Christ to the point of rejecting and crucifying Him.

Unless the Spirit has mastery in this war of Simon and Peter, the priest remains but a child in the nursery, not an ambassador in the sanctuary. The Lord gives him milk, as I, Saint Paul gave the Corinthians "not meat; you were not I strong enough for it. ...Nature still lives in you." - 1Cor. 3:2 - As some acorns sprout yet never become great oaks, so some ordinations make only spiritual saplings, not trees planted by the waters of life. That is to say, the spiritually undeveloped priest has a protracted infancy. There is a full assent to the Creed, but there is wanting the beauty of priestly holiness through the indwelling of God's Spirit. Because of this long infancy, there is a continual oscillation of sin and amendment, of failure and re-establishment in grace, of pettiness and the domination of the priest-state. There is a confession of individual sins, but no facing up to the fact that he is presuming on God's mercy and that he is living in a worldly state. The flesh is the rule of life, not the Spirit.

As result of this carnal life the priest has been rendered unfit for receiving more spiritual truths. Never being won away completely from the flesh, he never has that emptiness which is essential for receiving the Spirit. A man can be empty in soul, like the Grand Canyon, but such emptiness is unprofitable. The fruitful kind of emptiness is that of a nest, which the dove of the Holy Spirit can fill, or the emptiness of a flute, through which the breath of the Holy Spirit can pipe the joyful tunes of being one with Christ.

Because the Holy Spirit deepens our sense of sin in relation to the Crucifixion, the practical result should be to engage the priest in constant reparation for his sins. The Epistle to the Hebrews 5:3 bids the priest do precisely this; in our language, it tells him to offer Mass sometimes for himself. Our sins are more serious than the same sins in the laity, which is why God ordered greater sacrifices for priests. The ordinary people could offer a kid for their sins. - Leviticus 4:28 - Even a ruler of a nation could do the same. But the priest had to offer a bullock.

Such a transgression, if it be committed by the high priest then in office, brings guilt upon the whole people, and he must make amends for it by offering to the Lord a young bullock without blemish. - Leviticus 4:3 -

Responsibility is in proportion to privilege. The priest represents the people, and therefore his sin affects the whole Church. he is the embodiment of the people's sanctity as a community of worshipers.

It would be quite wrong to imagine that those who do not live by the Spirit do not experience remorse, or that conflict is absent from their lives. Sin that does not come out properly in confession, to be washed away by contrition and absolution, often comes out abnormally in complexes, such as imputing evil motives to others, hyper-criticism, or a love of distracting pleasures. Such a condition can easily lead to despair. The evil then pounces gleefully on his prey. - Revelation 12:10 - calls the devil "the accuser of our brethren." Before we commit a sin, Satan assures us that it is of no consequence; after we commit a sin, he persuades us that it is unforgivable. Before we commit a sin, he represents himself as the friend of man, urging him on to revolt; after we commit a sin, he smothers the soul in a false belief that deliverance is impossible.

To doubt forgiveness is the beginning of hell. Sacred Scripture tells us that Cain found no place for repentance, though with tears he sought it. - Gen. 4:13 - Remorse, not contrition, brings unavailing tears, as it did to Saul over the loss of his kingship, Judas over the loss of his apostleship, and Cain over the loss of God's favor. But the Holy Spirit sees guilt in relation to Calvary to give us urgent hope and then pardon, for on that hill we hear the cry:

Father, forgive them; they do not know what it is they are doing. - Luke 23:34 -

This awakening of a sense of sin through the Spirit applies not only to the priest, but to the faithful whom he shepherds. Sermons on hell fire awaken fear, but unless the Spirit is with the preacher, the fear is servile, not filial. Souls are led to repentance only through "the Sword of the Spirit, God's Word." - Eph. 6:17 - Now what does this Sword of the Spirit do in souls? It heightens the conflict between the body and the soul, between the spirit of the world and the Spirit of Christ.

God's Word to us is something alive, full of energy; it can penetrate deeper than any two-edged sword, reaching the very division between soul and spirit, between joints and marrow, quick to distinguish every thought and design in our hearts - Hebrews 4:12 -

Sinners are melted into contrition through the Spirit; they see the civil war in their own souls through the Spirit; the Spirit reveals the hidden sins they hoped no one could detect; the Spirit shows the man is a fallen creature and needs power from on high. The Spirit will convince atheists of their unbelief. No evil can be crucified until it is recognized and diagnosed and brought into the light. Self clothes itself in so many disguises that nothing but the Spirit can compel it to reveal its true sinful character. A priest with the Spirit of Christ will get a sinner to confession in circumstances in which the priest without the Spirit will fail. Scolding a sinner in the confessional may drive him away, but lifting him up in the Spirit of Christ, make his words effective beyond his oratory talents.

Human indeed we are, but it is in no human strength that we fight our battles. The weapons we fight with are not human weapons; they are divinely powerful, ready to pull down strongholds. Yes, we can pull down the conceits of men, every barrier of pride which sets itself up against the true knowledge of God; we make every mind surrender to Christ's service. - 2Cor. 10:3-6 -

Every bishop, every priest when he goes before the Lord Jesus for judgment, will be asked, "Where are your children?" The vocation of the priest is primarily to beget souls in Christ.

BY ARCHBISHOP FULTON J. SHEEN  ( 1895 to 1979 )

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -