From Ascensiontide to Pentecost, 3

The whole of theology is about "connecting the dots" throughout Sacred Scripture; we have been doing exactly that in this series on Ascension and Pentecost.  In this post, let's start with Acts 1:8 and try to do some serious dot-connecting:

But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and [καὶ] you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.

The Lord Jesus is making a connexion between the Outpouring and witness:  "...when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses..."  The Greek conjunction here--καὶ--meaning 'and,' 'even,' 'also' brings together two different ideas to form a composite; in this case, the composite is "Holy Spirit" and "witness."

The modality of the Apostolic witness post-Pentecost is decidedly different than it was pre-Pentecost; the "witness" of Sts James and John to call down lightning upon the unbelievers (Lk 9:54) or the "witness" of St Peter slicing off Malchus' ear (Jn 18:10) was not of the same supernatural quality as the Apostolic preaching on the morning of Pentecost.

But it is facile to say that the Holy Spirit empowered the infant Church for mission.  While that's certainly true, it underestimates the kick-in-the-stomach quality of what is really going on:  Preaching the Gospel of Jesus' Lordship.  Notice the "apocalyptic" tone of the Apostolic preaching that stresses the authority of Jesus Christ:

Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified (Acts 2:36);

You know the word which he sent ot the sons of Israel, preaching Good News of peace by Jesus Christ--He is Lord of all... (Acts 10:36); 

And He commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that He is the One ordained by God to be judge of the living and the dead (Acts10:42);

 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men to repent, becuase he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a Man whom he has appointed... (Acts 10:31).

Later, St Paul would say:

For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord... (2 Cor 4:5).

It was not only by the power of the Holy Spirit that the Apostles preached the Lordship of Jesus; it was, more precisely, after the enthronement of Jesus at the Father's right hand and then imbued with His power outpoured that the Apostles preached this Good News.

"Preached this Good News," indeed.  The Greek word for "preach" and for "Gospel" are not religious words--they are political words.   "Preach"--κηρύσσω--refers to the heralding on behalf of a king or an emperor and only later took on the distinctive Christian meaning we know now.  To "preach" is not simply to give a homily or to sermonize, but to declare something on behalf of a reigning monarch.  For Christians to preach, then, is to declare tidings on behalf of the risen, exalted, glorified Lord who has ascended into heaven and is enthroned at the Father's right hand.  To preach is to declare not merely a new political order but a renewed cosmic order where the Lordship of Jesus is universal, absolute, and inescapable.

"Good News" or "Gospel" is likewise a political word.  The accession of a new Roman Emperor or a Roman victory in war was called εὐαγγέλιον, 'gladsome tidings.'  Christians co-opted this word to describe the real "good news," namely that God is in control through the risen, exalted, and glorified Lord Jesus.  This is precisely why Mark's gospel begins the way it does:  Recall that it was compsed at Rome, the seat of the Roman Emperor:  "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God" (Mk 1:1).  This verse was a slap across the face of Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, as if to say:  "Caesar does not bring good news, but Christ does!"  Not only that, but Augustus had declared the Roman Emperor to be divi filius, "divine son"; do you see how St Mark addded insult to injury by declaring that not only did Christ bring Good New, but also that Christ, not Caesar, is the "Son of God"?

To preach the Gospel is to upset the worldly order by declaring the glad tidings of Jesus' Lordship; the ministry of evangelisation, then, is to "save" people from the ultimate Judgment by inviting them to submit themselves to the authority of Jesus Christ.  This is exactly what St Peter meant when he quoted the prophet Joel, "And it shall be that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" (Acts 2:21).

What we read in Acts is, of course, not verbatim; moreover, St Luke expects us to 'fill in the blanks,' as it were, and the rest of the passage from Joel (which is read at the Solemn Vigil of Pentecost) makes this abundantly clear.  Recall what I said in the previous post about Mount Zion being the place from where the king reigns--

And it shall come to pass that all who cal upon the name of the Lord shall be delivered; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the LORD has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the LORD calls (Joel 2:32).

 The Upper Room--where the Holy Spirit was first outpoured--was (and is) on Mount Zion, and it was precisely from Mount Zion that the Apostles preached the Gospel of the King and His Kingdom (cf Psalm 110; Isaiah 2).

Returning to where we began, Acts 1:8 connects mission to the Ascension and Pentecost; the longer ending of Mark does, too:

Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation...  So then the Lord Jesus, after He had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God (16:15, 19).

But where Jesus reiterated the Great Commission (please--Mt 28:16-20 and Mk 16:14-20 are two different events!) and where He ascended to the Father is also richly revealing:  It took place on the Mount of Olives (Acts 1:12; cf Lk 24:50), which is on the eastern side of the Valley of Jehosophat, with Jerusalem to the west.  Why here?

Recall the "Olivet Discourse" of Jesus (Mt 24:3ff) where He spoke, among others, of the End of All Things.  Again, why here?  Because it stands beside the Valley of Jehosophat, where both the prophet Joel and where theologians say the Last Judgment will take place (Joel 3:2, 12, 14).  By gathering at the Mount of Olives, Jesus is making at least two points:  First, to command the Apostles to preach the mercy of the Just Judge right beside where the Last Judgment will some day take place, and by ascending to the Father's right side, to make the point that Jesus is precisely the Father's own Mercy that is being preached.  More on that in the next post.

This, then, ought to give us a renewed understanding of Romans 10:9, "...if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved."  This is not a matter of merely personal belief because, as Paul said:

Since we have the same spirit of faith as he who wrote, "I believed, and so I spoke," we too believe, and so we speak, knowing that he who rasied the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into His Presence (2 Cor 4:13-14).

It is not simply "saying" by the Holy Spirit that we say "Jesus is Lord" (1 Cor 12:3); it is rather "speaking out loud" (λαλῶν) and "publicly declaring" (ὁμολογήσῃς) the Lordship of Jesus by way of witness that we fulfill the Church's missionary mandate.

And we should think of "mission" in political terms, too:  The Church is the diplomatic mission of the Lord Jesus Christ to the world, declaring His gift of grace, mercy, and salvation.

From Ascensiontide to Pentecost, 2

In the previous post, we looked at what St Luke was getting at in telling Theophilus that his earlier gospel was only about "what Jesus began to do and teach" (Acts 1:1) and that the life of Jesus continues in His anointed disciples.

That was the subtle answer to St Luke's literary teaser.

There is, in fact, another answer, one that is somewhat less subtle:  Jesus continues to "do and teach" by way of His Lordship.

More to the point, Jesus exercises His Lordship by way of His Sevenfold Gift (Is 11:2-3, LXX).

St Matthew the Evangelist, in a act of literary deftness, condenses the entire Paschal Mystery into his succint 28th chapter, ending at Galilee (instead of the Mount of Olives, where the Ascension took place).  The condensing of Easter's glory is found in Jesus' words, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me" (Mt 28:18).  This much is conveyed in the very Ascension itself, whereby Jesus took His throne beside the Father's--and where there is a throne, there is always authority.

The image at the top of this post--like yesterday's--shows the Ascension in the top panel and Pentecost in the lower panel, thus showing the connexion between Christ's authority and wielding that authority by the Holy Spirit.  This is the full sense of that passage in the Apocalypse, where the Seer of Patmos had a vision of the Holy Trinity:

...from him who is and who was and who is to come [= God the Father], and from the Seven Spirits who are before his throne [= God the Holy Spirit] , and from Jesus Christ, the Faithful Witness, the first-born of the dead, and ruler of kings on earth [= God the Son] (Apoc 1:4-5).

 The "Seven Spirit who are before his throne" makes an obvious connexion between the "Seven Spirits" described in the Greek version of Isaiah 11:2-3 and God's authority symbolized by the throne.

Further, in Apocalypse 4:5, a further connexion is made to the Menorah that once graced the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem temple:

From the throne issue flashes of lightning, and voices and peals of thunder, and before the throne burn seven torches of fire, which are the Seven Spirits of God.

In the Old Testament, the Holy of Holies was a mirror of the heavenly sanctuary (Heb 8:5).  As for the Menorah, the Greek text of Isaiah makes it clear what the Seer of Patmos is alluding to:

 And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him:  the spirit of wisdom, and of understanding, the spirit of counsel, and of fortitude, the spirit of knowledge, and of godliness.  And He shall be filled with the spirit of the fear of the Lord (Is 11:2-3).

 In verse four, Isaiah makes it clear that this Sevenfold Gift, or the "Seven Spirits" is precisely how the future Anointed One--Christ--will exercise His judiciary power:

He shall not judge according to the sight of the eyes, nor reprove according to the hearing of the ears.  But He shall judge the poor with justice, and shall reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips He shall slay the wicked.  And justice shall be the girdle of His loins: and faith the girdle of His reins (Is 11:3-6).

So Jesus exercises His Lordly authority by way of the Holy Spirit.  He said as much the night before He died:

...for if I do not go away, the Counsellor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.  And when he comes, he will convince the world of sin and of righteouness and of judgment:  of sin, because they do not believe in Me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no more; of judgment becuase the ruler of this world is judged (Jn 16:7-11).

The Holy Spirit, then is how Jesus goes about His dominion--to convict the world of unbelief, to demonstrate His obedience to the Father by returning to Him by way of the Ascension, and to judge Satan.  Again, this is why the Seer of Patmos puts the "Seven Spirits" and the "throne" together.

That was the language of St John the Evangelist; St Paul the Apostle makes the same point but with a different set of vocabulary:

None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself.  If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.  For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living (Rom 10:7-9).

In other words, the Paschal Mystery--the Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost--inaugurated Jesus' Lordship.  We will have something to say about a more explicit connexion between Jesus' Lordship and the very day of Pentecost in the next post.

Going back to what St John wrote (Jn 16:7-11), we see that the Holy Spirit extends Jesus' Lordship to thre different spheres:  unbelievers, believers, and apostate Lucifer.  Jesus wields His Lordship such that the world is given notice that everyone stands in need of grace ("because they do not believe in Me"); He wields His Lordship over Chrisians by the Holy Spirit directing their belief in Him whose earthly life culminated in the Ascension ("I go to the Father"); finally, the Anointed One wields His Lordship by the Holy Spirit by passing a sentence of eternal condemnation against Satan ("the ruler of this world is judged").

No-one escapes Jesus' Lordship; the only ones who are "marked safe" are those who are saved:

Any one who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him (Rom 8:9).

In the next post, we will visit, in a more exact way, just how the Holy Spirit governs Christians.  The answer is hidden in the conjunction "but" right in the middle of Acts 1:6-8 and on the very day of Pentecost in Acts 2:1.

From Ascensiontide to Pentecost, 1

In the classical Roman Rite, the liturgy lingers on one small, short passage from the Acts of the Apostles--

In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when He was taken up, after He had given commandment through the Holy Spirit to the Apostles whom He had chosen (Acts 1:1-2).

Do you see something curious about what St Luke the Evangelist said?  "[A]ll that Jesus began to do and teach..."  Began!  The entire "first book"--the Gospel According to Luke--was simply about what "...all Jesus began to do and  teach..."  Think about it:  The story of Jesus, from the Incarnation (Lk 1:26-38) up to and including His Ascension (Lk 24:50-51) that St Luke records in his "first book" was only a beginning.

If St Luke's gospel was only a 'beginning,' where's the rest of the story?

St Mark the Evangelist does something similar in his gospel:  "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God" (Mk 1:1).  Again, Mark's "beginning" spans the baptism of Jesus (Mk 1:9-1) all the way to His Ascension in the longer, canonical ending (Mk 16:19).

Again, if St Mark's gospel was only a 'beginning,' where's the rest of the story?

In a word:  "Christ" is the beginning of Jesus' story.  "Christians" are the continuation of that same story of Jesus Christ.

The longer ending of the Gospel According to Mark concludes thus:

And they whent forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signes that attended it.  Amen (Mk 16:20).

The "two men" who were dressed "in white robes" essentially tell the Apostles to quit lollygagging and get busy--

Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven?  This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in teh same way as you saw Him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11).

In a forthcoming post, I will talk about the relationship between the Ascension of the Lord and His Return.  For now, we need to explore what St Luke meant by telling this "Theophilus" that the prequel to his Acts of the Apostles was only about what Jesus "began to do and teach."

What happened between Ascension and Pentecost?  Jesus took His seat at the Father's right hand--which is to say He took up His rightful throne to rule, to inaugurate His Lordship.  I do not mean that Jesus was without authority previously; I mean that His Lordship took upon itself a new modality, thanks to Pentecost.  St Paul makes a clear connexion between the Paschal Mystery and the Lordship of Jesus:

None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself.  I fwe live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.  For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living (Rom 14:7-9). 

Mind you, St Paul was writing to a Roman audience, where the Greek word for Lord, Kyrie, was a loaded one.  Whenever the Roman Emperor processed into the City with booty from war, the citizens of Rome would line up alongside the road where the Emperor was passing by and shout out, "Kyrie, eleison!  Kyrie, eleison!"

Yes, that's where we got the liturgical expression.  We'll come back to this in a moment.

Ten days after the Ascension, the very first Christian sermon was preached.  At one point, St Peter said:

Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified!

Both of these titles have to do with the Holy Spirit.  As "Christ," Jesus was the "Anointed One," that is, chock-full of the Holy Spirit.   He was concevied by the Holy Spirit (Mt 1:18, 20; Lk 1:35); He was "driven" by the Holy Spirit to face down Satan in the wilderness (Mt 4:1; Lk 4:1; Mk 1:12); He "rejoiced in the Holy Spirit" (Lk 10:21f), and was even raised from the dead by the Holy Spirit (Rom 8:11).  In fact, the mission of Jesus was not merely about forgiveness of sins and eternal life; those were, really, part of the 'package deal' of the Gift of the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised.  Just before His baptism, St John the Forerunner promised that the Coming One--Jesus--who wil "baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire" (Lk 3:16).  They were about to get, finally, what Jesus came for.

That is why the Four Evangelists all begin with the story of St John the Forerunner--it was not only his baptizing Jesus that was important, but his prophetic word about Jesus' ministry which would be a long preparation for Pentecost.  Hence, just before His Ascension, Jesus spoke of the "promise of the Father which, He said, 'you heard from Me, for John baptized with water, but before many days you shall be baptised with the Holy Spirit'" (Acts 1:4-5)

But there is a significant information gap, and a very telling one at that.  Just prior to His Ascension, St Luke tells us, Jesus spent forty days with His disciples

...speaking of the Kingdom of God.  And while staying with them He charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father... (Acts 1:3-4).

One searches in vain for much reference to this "Kingdom of God" which the Risen Jesus spoke about in the Resurrection narratives.  What, exactly, did Jesus say about the Kingdom?  Where are His words?  No details are given.

Here's why:  The Gospel proclamation is precisely about the Kingdom of God (Mt 4:23; cf Mk 1:15), one that we would become members of thanks to baptism and the Holy Spirit (Jn 3:5).  What Jesus said--and was left unrecorded by the Evangelists--is precisely the content of the Gospel's preaching.

The Upper Room, where the Holy Spirit was outpoured upon the Apostles (Acts 1:13; cf 2:1), was (and is) located on Mount Sion.  This was not fortuitious.  In many places, "Mount Sion" was the place of the King of Israel:  "I have set up My King on Sion, My holy mountain" (Ps 2:6); "His holy mountain, beautiful in elevation, is the joy fo all the earth.  Mount Sion, in the far north, the city of the great King" (Ps 48:2); verses could be easily multiplied.  But the fact that the Holy Spirit was first outpoured on Mount Zion shows a connexion between the Holy Spirit and Jesus' dominion.  Hence "the Gospel of the Kingdom."

Remember what I said earlier about the Romans lining up, shouting "Kyrie, eleison" to receive from the Emperor's largesse?  That is exactly what happens between Christ and Christians:

 And from His [= Jesus'] fulness have we all recceived, grace upon grace (Jn 1:16);

...and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus (1 Tim 1:14);

...It is like the precious oil upon the head [= Christ], running down upon the beard, upon the beard of Aaron, running down thecollar of his robes!  It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls uopn the mountains of Zion!  It is there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life for evermore (Ps 133:2-3).

When Jesus was enthroned at the Father's right hand, He "received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit" and "has poured out this which you see and hear" (Acts 2:33).  Thus, like the oil flowing down from Aaron's crown, the Holy Spirit overflowed from Christ to Christians.  And having received those same Seven Gifts which Jesus was anointed with (Is 11:2-3 LXX), His disciples then take on a certain likeness to Jesus, a certain 'connaturality' with Him:  This is the source of Jesus' Lordship over Christians--Jesus is Lord over us Christians because we are conformed to Him by receiving the same Holy Spirit that He has in such a way that we "live as He lived" (1 Jn 5:6).

The mediaeval Christians got it right when they depicted the Ascension and Pentecost together (as in the image above), because the Ascension of Jesus instigated the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon His disciples, thus moving them to submit themselves to His sweet and gentle Lordship.

And that, my friends, is how we continue the story of Jesus:  The Holy Spirit overflowed from Christ to Christians, from the Head to the Body, so that your life and mine would be the many spin-offs of the Acts of the Apostles telling the story of the same Lord Jesus to the world, all in the power of Pentecost.

Be the sequel to the story of Jesus!

How to Pray to the End the Plague

Many people think God is like Santa Claus, that even if we're on the naughty list, we still owed gifts.  That image of God is idolatrous.

In this essay, I'd like to offer some Biblical reflections on praying aright, an art for which the Body of Christ seems to be experiencing something of a famine.  So, please, open your Bible and join me on a pilgrimage to the "throne of grace" (Heb 4:16).

1.  Repentance
St James wrote, "You ask and do not recevie because you ask wrongly..." (Jas 4:3); he goes on to say, "...you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions...  Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?  Therefore whoever wishes to be afriend of the owrld makes himself an enemy fo God" (Jas 4:3a-4).  The apostles St Paul (2 Cor 6:17-18) and St John (1 John 2:15) make the same point.

On the other hand, "If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on the things that are above, not the things that are on earth" (Col 3:1-2).  The Word thus speaks of changing our minds away from worldliness and towards the heavenly life.  It is this 'changing of the mind' that exactly constitutes repentance.

In traditional Catholic praxis, "contrition" consists of compunction for sin, that is, sorrow for having offended God, and purpose of amendment, that is, a resolution to not recommit sin.  In fact, sacramental absolution can be invalidated by the penitnent who, in the confessional, refuses to not repeat his sin.

Traditional Catholic praxis also demands that one be in the state of grace in order to pray efficaciously, or at least intend to return to the state of grace as soon as possible.  St Louis de Montfort, in his The Secret of the Rosary (no. 117) has this to say, for example:

[...] say the holy Rosary with advantage one must be in a state of grace or at least be fully determined to give up sin, for all our theology teaches us that good works and prayers are dead works if they are done in a state of mortal sin. Therefore, they can neither be pleasing to God nor help us to gain eternal life. As Scripture says, "Praise is not seemly in the mouth of a sinner" [Sirach 15:9].

Hence St James:  "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much" (5:16, AV), and the only righteous person is a repentant person.  After all, why should we expect God to favour us with cleansing our land of the pandemic if we refuse God the favour of being converted and reformed?

2.  Pray in the Name of Jesus
In several places, the Lord Christ invites His disciples to pray "in My Name."  To pray in Jesus' Name is to pray with His own authority such that we almost speak on His behalf.  For example, the Governor-General of Canada speaks in the name of The Queen, that is, she speaks to Parliament as if Her Majesty herself was addressing them.  When we pray in the Name of Jesus, we speak to the Father with Jesus' own authority.

In His Farewell Discourse, the Lord said "Whatever you ask in My Name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in My Name, I will do it" (Jn 14:13-14).  Again, "...I chose you and appointed you that you shoudl go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whaever you ask the Father in My Name, he may give it to you" (Jn 15:16).

Even more powerful is corporate prayer in the Name of Jesus:  "Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done fo rthem by My Father in heaven.  For where two or three are gathered in My Name, there I am in the midst of them" (Mt 18:19-20).

It is a mistake to think that praying 'in Jesus' Name' is an added luxury or simply more beneficial than other kinds of prayer; it is, in fact, the only true prayer.  The reason is that in Jesus alone is the Father accessible at all:  "I am the Way, and the  Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through Me" (Jn 14:6).  Not "principally through Me" or "usually through Me" but "except through Me."  St Paul makes a similar point:  "For there is one God, and there is one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim 2:5).  There are no alternative mediators.

Clearly, to pray 'in the Name of Jesus' is to boldly access the Father on Jesus' behalf.  But how do we get to the point of being able to pray not only on behalf of Jesus, but to God as Father?

3.  Pray in the Power of the Holy Spirit
Our access to God is by way of Jesus Christ such that He lends us His own voice in addressing God as "Father."  But this can only happen if we are incorporated to Christ, and that is done precisely by the indweling Holy Spirit:  "Any one who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him" (Rom 8:9).  Thus:

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons [and daughters] of God.  For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of Sonship.  When we cry, "Abba, Father!" it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God (Rom 8:14-16).

Whereas in his Epistle to the Romans St Paul speaks of the 'Spirit of Sonship,' in his Epistle to the Galatians he speaks of the 'Spirit of Adoption':

...God sent forth his Son, born of a Woman, born under the Law, so that we might receive adoption as sons [and daughters].  And because you are sons [and daughters], God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba!  Father!"  So you are no longer a slave but a son [and a daughter] (Gal 4:4-7).

It is precisely "through Him [Christ]  we both have access in one Spirit to the Father" (Eph 2:18).  It is by baptism in the Holy Spirit that we are incporporated into Christ (1 Cor 12:13) and thus are 'extensions' of Christ; our being an extension of Christ is precisely how we pray 'in the Name of Jesus,' and only when we are empowered by surrendered to the indwelling Holy Spirit can we do this fully.

By the way, I wonder:  With the Church's missionary outreach languishing and given Christians' evangelistic lethargy in growing the Body of Christ, is it possible to fully pray "in the Name of Jesus"?  Can we dare to approach the Father while intentionally shrinking the numbers of new Christians?  Could it be that God is inviting us to bring more people to baptism in the Holy Spirit so that with a stronger voice we can raise our prayer for mercy?

Back to out point:  Empowered by the Holy Spirit, we can even pray 'in the Name of Jesus' by allowing the Holy Spirit to supply the words for our prayer:  "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do nto know howw to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself interceds for us with sighs too deep for words" (Rom 8:26).  This is why, when we sing the ancient hymn to the Holy Spirit, Veni Creator Spiritus, the Church sings:  "Tu septiformis munere / digitus paternae dexterae, / tu rite promissum Patris, / sermone ditans guttura"; one English translation has it:  "Thou in Thy sevenfold gifts are known; / Thou, finger of God's hand we own; / Thou, promise of the Father, Thou / Who dost the tongue with power imbue."  Hence does St Paul tell us in several places to "pray at all times in the Spirit" (Eph 6:18) and he himself admits:  "I will pray with the Spirit and I will pray with the mind also" (1 Cor 14:15).  St Jude Thaddeus also says:  "...pray in the Holy Spirit" (Jude 1:20).

4.  Pray According to the Word
In His 'High Priestly Prayer' during the Farewell Discourse, the Lord Jesus said that "If you abide in Me, and My Words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you" (Jn 15:7).  Our familiarity with the words of Jesus--and, by extension, the entire Word of God--thus gives us a certain familiarity with the ways of God such that we learn how to pray for those things according to the mind of God.

Unfamiliarity with the Word of God leaves us guessing at what God's will is; without a wholehearted disposition of "Thy will be done" that comes with knowing God and his ways through the Bible, our prayer loses its full potential.  Though we may not have full insight into God's will, by fixing our intention for "living in the Word," our hearts are so formed that obedience to God becomes our 'default' position; still, our knowledge of the Bible equips us with a sense of direction prayer:  "For Thy testimonies are my meditation, and Thy statues are my counsellors" (Psalm 118 [119]:24, Greek).  The Word of God, then, counsels us how and what to pray for.

It is only by storing up the Word in our hearts that we can discern God's will and pray accordingly:  "And this is the confidence which we have in Him, that if we ask anything according ot his will he hears us" (1 Jn 5:14).  St Thomas Aquinas teaches clearly that prayer does not change God's mind to take a different direction, nor does it poke him for things he might have overlooked.  Rather,

For we pray not that we may change the Divine disposition, but that we may impetrate that which God has disposed to be fulfilled by our prayers in other words "that by asking, men may deserve to receive what Almighty God from eternity has disposed to give," as Gregory says [Dial. i, 8] (S.th., 2a2ae, q. 83, art. 2, resp.).

When I was in the seminary, we were told to prepare for our homilies "with a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other," meaning that we are to illumine the events of the day with the light of God's Word.  I would take this a step further:  We engage in intercessory prayer with our Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other because, as the Second Vatican Council tells us, "the Church has always had the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel" (Gaudium et spes, 4).  If we are to pray for an end to COVID-19, the rubrics are no different.  Equipped with our knowledge of the Bible, the Lord calls us to scrutinize the "signs of the times in the light of the Gospel" and to pray accordingly:  What is God trying to tell the world?  What is God trying to tell the Church?  What is God trying to tell me?  My friend and our sister in Christ, Prof Dr Mary Healy, takes us in this direction in her superb article here.

Having discerned God's will regarding the plague in the light of the Gospel, we have that very clarity needed to pray strategically.

5.  Pray Humbly!
Permit me to make a daring statement:  The truly humble has God wrapped around his finger.  Of course, it is impossible to control God; what I mean here is that God so loves the disposition of the humble person that he is swift to his or her aid.  "O Lord, You will hear the desire of the meek; you will strengthen their heart, You will incline Your ear to do justice..." (Ps 10:17, 18).

In the Old Testament, both Manassah and Hezekiah, both renowned for their wickedness, received an answer to their prayers on account of their humility:

And when Ahab heard those words [of Jezebel's sins], he tore his clothes, and put on sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted and lay in sackcloth, and went out dejectedly.  And the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying, "Have you seen how Ahab has humbled himself before Me?  Because he has humbled himself before Me, I will not bring the evil in his days... (1 Kgs 21:27-29);

But Hezekiah did not make return according ot the benefit done to him, for his heart was proud.  Therefore wrath came upon him and Judah and Jerusalem.  But Hezekiah hubled himself for the pride of his heart, both he and the inharbitants of Jerusalem, so that the wrath of the Lord did not come upon them in teh days of Hezekiah (2 Chr 32:25-26).

St Peter wrote, "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt you.  Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares for you" (1 Pt 5:6).  Likewise, St James, "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you" (Jas 4:10).

But this begs the question:  What, exactly, is humility?  The best answer I have heard was from a preaching by a Minorite friar, Fr Leo Clifford:  "It is simply the truth...that apart from God, we are nothing!"  This, in turn reminds us of the meaning of grace, the free, unearned, costly grace of God that's ours for the asking, provided that we credit nothing to ourselves and everything to God.  This is why the Publican went away forgiven, because he prayed humbly, whereas the "religious" man multiplied his sins by his presumptuous prayer (Lk 18:9-14).

Sisters and brothers in Christ:  God wills only good things for us!  But the storehouse of God's goodness must be asked for aright.  Let us pray with all repentance and humility.  Let us be filled with the Holy Spirit and pray in the Name of Jesus.  Let us hide the Word of God in our hearts so that it beats like God's own heart, and thus be able to see the world's sorrow in the light of the Gospel and thus be equipped to know what to pray for on the way to God's merciful cleansing this world of COVID-19.

Catherine Gave the Holy Spirit Sovereignty

The following is a homily I preached in the presence of the Dominican community at Couvent St-Jean-Baptiste on the occasion of the Order's commemoration of St Catherine of Siena.

While at table for our Epiphany dinner in 2019, a few of us somehow struck up a conversation about today’s saint, and one of the friars admitted with his characteristic candour, “I do not like Catherine of Siena—she is just too crazy for me.”  Anyone who’s read even a paragraph of her Dialogues knows exactly what he’s talking about, and probably secretly agrees that she’s a hard one to control.

The gospel’s image for the Holy Spirit, “Rivers of living water” which “will flow from within” (Jn 7:38) the Lord also gives the impression of something uncontrollable.  In fact, all of the Biblical metaphors for the Holy Spirit seem to make the same point, whether it’s a bursting stream of water, a blazing fire, or a blustery wind.  John the Baptist’s prophetic word about the Anointed One baptizing us with “fire” (Lk 3:16), this same Christ who “wished it were already kindled” (Lk 12:49) is nothing if not unsettling.  Nicodemus was right to be perplexed about this unpredictable Wind making “everyone born of the Spirit” (Jn 3:8) equally unpredictable.  And the fact that the elemental diversity of water, wind, and fire—besides the fact that they don’t mix very well—perhaps tells us something of the Holy Spirit’s recalcitrance.  Small wonder the field of Pneumatology is so difficult.  Thank God for Yves Congar!

What my former rector said about my seminary could very well be applied to Catherine, “It’s a crazy house, but that’s a good thing.”  He was thinking of variety and excitement, except those were things Catherine did not like.  The goodness of her craziness—if you’ll forgive my momentary irreverence—was located in her very surrender to “Love,” a favourite sobriquet for the Holy Spirit.  As anyone who’s been in love knows, the only sensible thing to do is to surrender to it.  I believe the expression is “crazy in love,” and Catherine certainly was.  Here we’re talking about the Loving between the Lover and the Beloved; only, the world’s been caught in-between.  This is the heart of the Church’s Mission:  To tell the world to just “go with the flow”—pun intended.

A few years ago, a friend of mine said “Give the Holy Spirit sovereignty.”  We’re now peregrinating towards Pentecost; if anything, our consistent reading from the Acts of the Apostles throughout Easter highlights the inescapable necessity of pairing the Gospel proclamation with the Holy Spirit’s sovereignty.

The tricky bit is learning how to distinguish ‘hype’ from ‘Holy Spirit’ and that, in part, is done by again distinguishing Biblical ‘freedom’ described by the Apostle, “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17)) from ‘freewheeling.’  This, I submit to you, is what ‘redeems’ the lady of the hour’s “craziness.”

St Thomas tells us that the Seven Gifts make us free and ever freer, and that was the secret to being Catherine:  She gave the Holy Spirit sovereignty.

May her secret be ours, too.

Theology as Pastoral Praxis

On the top shelf of one of my bookcases sits several series of dogmatic manuals--the "Spanish Summa," Tanqueray, Wilhelm and Scannell, Hunter, and Ott.  Yet, when one compares these manuals with the Summa theologiae of St Thomas Aquinas, something very odd emerges.  That odd thing is the complete absence of "moral theology" within these textbooks of dogmatic theology.

Aquinas, in contrast, appears to 'wedge' so-called "moral theology" in the Secunda pars, that is, between the Prima pars on God, Creation, and divine government and the Tertia pars on the Mystery of Jesus Christ, the Sacraments, and the Last Things.  The reason for doing this is revealed in putting "moral theology" in scare quotes--because the Angelic Doctor's long, long treatment on the virtues, vices, gifts of the Holy Spirit, and Beatitudes is not--I repeat not--"moral theology" in the usual sense of the term.  The Secunda pars is, rather, a confessor's handbook, and Aquinas' detailed explanations of the soul's parts, what constitutes moral excellence, and so on, are put in place in order to help the confessor diagnose penitents.

Hence the expression cura animarum--the "cure of souls."

But that's not all.  Unlike the general modern pastoral praxis of minimalism, the Secunda pars aims to shape the Christian soul not only for "moral excellence" but especially to live the virtuous life in such a way that the soul becomes disposed for contemplation.  The idea is that--if I'm reading Aquinas correctly--he intends to form the soul in such an exercise of the supernatural virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit that they have the right spiritual apparatus to gaze upon Christ who comes to the reader in the Tertia pars.  In other words, the Secunda pars makes a contemplative out of the reader so that she can approach the mystery of Jesus Christ in the best possible way.

This is a far cry from how "moral theology" is often done nowadays--with the notable exceptions of Servais-Theodore Pinckaers OP and Romanus Cessario OP.  As Marie-Dominique Chenu OP says in his Aquinas and His Role in Theology--

Theology in St Thomas's hands creates an organic structure for the content of this truth:  it is a wisdom that is at once both comptemplative and active.  Of course, contemplation and action emerge from different "disciplines"; but the modern distinction between dogma and morality finds no support within the spirituality and methodology of the Summa.  Likewise, the distinction between the ascetical (action) and the mystical (contemplation) breaks down before the unity of the grace of Christ [p. 45].

I an beginning to suspect that Aquinas' abandoned project of commenting on the Sentences of Peter Lombard has to do with just this--in Book III, the Lombard discusses the virtues and the gifts in Christ; the new project of the Summa theologiae sought to create a whole section on the Christian life ("morality" seems too mundane) to bridge God and Christ within us Christians.

Too often I've been told two things.  First, theology is "not pastoral"--heck, if the old manuals drive a wedge between dogmatic and moral theology, then of course it's not going to be "pastoral"--which is precisely the genius of Aquinas in laying out the Secunda pars bridging the Prima and Tertia pars.  This mentality of theology-less homilies (God save us) and doctrinally insipid catechumenates  arises precisely out of this false dichotomy.

Second, I've also been told that the laity "do not need" hefty doctrine or that "they won't understand."  This flies in the face of the entire purpose of the indwelling Holy Spirit (cf Jn 14:26) and the whole purpose of ecclesial leadership (cf 1 Tim 3:2, 5:17), which is to teach and preach.  Christian Smith coined the phrase moralistic therapeutic deism to describe what has become the norm of pastoral praxis--a "God says you're ok and will make everything ok" approach to life that is anything but Christian.  The indwelling Third Person of the Holy Trinity in Christ's disciples serves a far, far more formidable purpose than that.

Despite their differences, both Chenu and his Magister, Reginal Garrigou-Lagrange OP, agreed that contemplation was the normal life of grace--and it is precisely the Lord Jesus Christ to whom Christians' contemplative gaze is to behold and to love.

The Christian "moral life" is not simply about being "good" or simply about "staying forgiven"; it is about ordering the soul so excellently that they are ideally disposed to befriend Christ.

After all, God did not become Man in order to "break even" what was lost by Adam, but to raise us up to glory.  As we've heard several times already over the Easter Octave,

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.  For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:1-3).

Anointed for Sacrifice

We know that the Passion of Jesus--"glorification" in the language of St John the Evangelist--released the Holy Spirit upon the world.  John 7:39 and 16:7 make that abundantly clear.

What's often lost upon us poor Anglophones at the mercy of Bible translations is that the Greek text behind the verse we all think we know, "He gave up the ghost," says, literally, "He handed [over] the Spirit" (paredōken to Pneuma, Jn 19:30).  Scholars call this the "Johannine Pentecost"; many are needlessly confused about this version of "Pentecost" vis-a-vis the version we all know from Acts 2, but that's a topic for another post.

We ought to pair with this Passion-Pentecost relay with Hebrews 9:14, "...how much more shall the Blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God..." which, in turn, suggests to us that the Holy Spirit had a role in Jesus' very self-offering to His Father.

The overall thrust of Hebrews was to demonstrate the validity of Jesus' priesthood despite His descent from the tribe of Judah rather than Levi; that validity was demonstrated by the sacred author's appeal to Psalm 110:4 (cf Heb 7:7).  At the very start of Hebrews, however, there is a subtle hint that could easily get lost in that forest of words and ideas, especially at 1:9, "You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; / therefore God, your God, has anointed you / with the oil of gladness beyond your comrades."  This, in turn, is taken from Psalm 45:7.  What was this "oil of gladness," and when was Jesus "anointed"?

St Thomas Aquinas appeals to Romans 14:17 in explaining this "oil of gladness," where St Paul says that "...the Kingdom of God does not mean food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit"; to this we can easily add that verse from St Luke, "At that time, Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit" (Lk 10:21).  The anointing itself took place at Jesus' conception (cf Mt 1:18; Lk 1:35), otherwise He wouldn't be "Christ" until later on--and there was never a time when Jesus was not "the Christ," that is, the Anointed One, and it was precisely this anointing of Jesus how He was able to "offer Himself without blemish" by way of the "eternal Spirit."

Going back to Hebrews 1:9/Psalm 45:7, especially where it reads "...anointed you above your fellows," bear in mind that the anointing of Christians is an overflow from Christ's own anointing:  "From His fullness have we all received, grace upon grace" (Jn 1:16); by the Father's arrangement, the Anointing belongs to Jesus (cf Is 11:1-3, 61:1), and Christians receive it only from Christ Himself.

But what does this mean?

The "baptismal priesthood" or the "royal priesthood" is a grace that the entire People of God share in--as distinguished from the ministerial priesthood of the ordained.  The whole Body of Christ--clergy and laity--receive the overflow of the Anointed One's superabundant unction such that we are constituted a "holy priesthood" (1 Pt 2:5, 9) and "a kingdom, priests to His God and Father" (Apoc 1:6).

The question remains:  What does it mean to be a "holy priesthood"?  St Peter offers us a hint:  "...be yourselves built up into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (1 Pt 2:5).  A priest, by definition offers a sacrifice; it is false to think that a "sacrifice" necessarily involves killing or bloodshed; rather, to sacrifice something is to make that something sacred--notice how each word begins with "sacr--":  sacrifice; sacred.  Our question then becomes:  What, then, do I sacrifice?  With what do I offer this sacrifice?

St Paul answers the question for us:

I appeal to you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship (Rom 12:1).

Now do you see what Jesus did?  By His indwelling Holy Spirit, His self-offering to the Father was enabled and "without blemish" (Heb 9:14); we Christians thus share in the priesthood of Jesus by offering ourselves along with Him--which is the full meaning of Colossians 1:24.

The royal priesthood which we all share in is not an opportunity to try to pull rank in the Church as a kind of power-play; rather, it is an opportunity to let God himself pull rank on us because our anointing thus enables us to surrender ourselves completely to God.  The Holy Spirit enabled Jesus to surrender Himself on the Cross for our salvation; the Holy Spirit also enables us to surrender ourselves with Jesus; the Holy Spirit, therefore, is the very rubric whereby we obey the Lord's command to "take up your cross and follow Me" (Mt 16:24-26).

Enough with tokenism.  Enough of using devotions as a bargaining chip.  The Bible is clear--as Christians, we must surrender ourselves to the Lord, giving him sovereignty in our lives.  That's what the anointing is for.  By refusing this self-surrender, we shirk from discipleship.

Do not let a single drop of that unction of the Holy Spirit go to waste.