In order that we may properly understand the role of the Holy Spirit, the person of the Blessed Trinity, try to picture the apostles and the faithful on earth during the ten days after the "Ascension" of our Lord Jesus Christ into heaven. The Universal Church then existed in its raw material - its great arteries had been formed, its head had been named, its faithful were called, but it still lacked a soul.
The condition of the Church at this time may be imperfect likened to America before the drawing up of the Declaration of Independence. The Dutch, the English, the French, the Irish, the Scotch, and the other nationalities were scattered up and down the Atlantic seaboard, but there was no common bond or spirit holding them together. They needed unity - a soul to make them one. That spark came in the Declaration of Independence, which fired them with the spirit of free-born American people. The Universal Church was somewhat in this position. The apostles and disciples and the faithful were still separate individuals; they needed a soul to make them one. But here the analogy breaks down. The spirit which was to make the faithful of the Universal Church one was different from the spirit that made America one.
The condition of the Church can be represented better by the analogy of life. Its faithful were like the elements in a chemical laboratory, capable of being part of a body, and yet not a body because lacking a soul. We know up to one hundred percent the chemicals that enter into the constitution of a human body, and yet with all our superior knowledge of chemistry, we cannot make a body in our laboratories. Why? Because we lack the power to give a unifying principle, a soul, to those chemicals which will make them mutually coalesce into that new emergent we call life.
Now the apostles were like the chemicals in a laboratory; they were individuals, each with his own outlook on life, each with his doubts, his uncertainties, his points of view. They could not give themselves unity anymore than chemicals alone can make life. The permanent union of their minds was impossible without a certitude from on high, for life is not a push from below, but a gift from above. They needed a soul, a spirit - a vivifying, unifying principle which would make the cells of the Mystical Body cohere in the unity of a headship under the Lord Jesus Christ. And this vivifying, unifying spirit did not come until the day of "Pentecost."
The apostles knew the Holy Spirit would come to them. They would never forget the beautiful way in which our Lord Jesus Christ promised his spirit the night before he died:
I have yet many things to say to you: but you cannot bear them now. But when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will teach you all truth... And I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you for ever. This was only a promise of the Spirit that was to come. But our Lord Jesus Christ keeps his promises. Accordingly, ten days after the Ascension, the apostles with Peter as their head were in solitude in the Cenacle where the Savior had instituted the Eucharist and appeared to doubting Thomas.
And suddenly they heard what sounded like a powerful wind from heaven, the noise of which filled the entire house in which they were sitting; and something appeared to them that seemed like tongues of fire; these separated and came to rest on the head of each of them. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak foreign languages as the Spirit gave them the gift of speech. - Acts 2:2-4 -
In the fiery glow of that Pentecostal gift the individuals, the cells of the Mystical Body, like the bones in the vision of prophet Ezekiel, were drawn together into a living body, animated by the Eternal Spirit of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. The scattered rays now emerged into the light of the world. All they had dimly guessed at and faintly perceived now became absolute certainty in the glow of the Pentecostal fire, as they saw the continuity of Nazareth and the Cenacle: For as Christ Jesus had taken his physical body from the womb of the Virgin Mary overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, so now was Christ Jesus taking from the womb of humanity his Mystical Body overshadowed by the Pentecostal Spirit. The Universal Church was now created in the strictest sense of the term - it had its head, the Lord Jesus Christ, its soul, the Holy Spirit; and us, its body.
Organization has nothing to do with the marvelous vitality of the Church, nor is there any other human explanation. If the Church were to left to its human elements it would have perished long ago. The secret of her immortal life is her Eternal Spirit, which cannot be destroyed by the world anymore than the soul of an infant can be destroyed. Hence, in the face of the force of violence the Spirit manifests the immortality of her being; against the force of ideas the Spirit shows the immortality of her ideas; and against the force of passion the Spirit shows the immortality of her love.
If there is any picture that adequately describes the Church in time, it is that of a person living throughout cataclysms and revolutions, the progress and the unfolding of the centuries. A person who is fifty today is the same identical person as always, despite the changes in his bodily life and the historical upheavals of our time. He can say, "I saw mankind exalt itself to a god in the pre-war period; I saw that same humanity prove it was not a god but only a beast in the battlefields of the World War[s]; I saw it settle down to a false peace without ever learning the lesson that it cannot survive without God." In like manner, the Church is an abiding Person through all centuries. The only difference between the acorn and the oak, the mustard seed and the great tree. Her faithful have come and gone, like the cells in a human body, but her Spirit has remained one and the same.
And since it is the Spirit that makes the Body, the Church which is the Mystical Body of Christ Jesus has been contemporaneous with the centuries. When, therefore, we in the twenty first century wish to know about the Lord Jesus Christ, about his early Church, about history, we go not only the dusty records but to the living Church:
I have adapted myself to every form of government the world has ever known; I have lived with Caesars and kings, tyrants and dictators, parliaments and presidents, monarchies and republics. I have welcomed every advance of science, and were it not for me the great records of the pagan world would not have been preserved. It is true I have not changed my doctrine, but that is because "the doctrine is not mine but his that sent me."I change my garments, which belong to time, but not my Spirit, which belongs to eternity. In the course of my long life, I have seen so many modern ideas become out-dated, that I know I shall live to chant a requiem over the modern ideas of the last century.
I shall grow weak when my faithful become rich and cease to pray, but I shall never die. I shall be crucified as I was on Calvary, but I shall rise again, and finally when time shall be no more, and I shall have grown to full stature, then shall I be taken into heaven as the bride of my Head, the Lord Jesus 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 -
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