THE DESCENT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire,
and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with
the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the
Spirit gave them utterance.
Acts II, 3.
Holy Mother of God, Virgin ever blessed, glorious and noble,
chaste and inviolate, O Mary Immaculate, chosen and beloved
of God, endowed win singular sanctity, worthy of all praise,
thou who art the Advocate for the sins of the whole world; O
listen, listen, listen to us, O holy Mary, Pray for us.
Intercede for us. Disdain not to help us. For we are
confident and know for certain that thou canst obtain all
that thou wiliest from thy Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, God
Almighty, the King of ages, Who liveth with the Father and
the Holy Ghost, for ever and ever.
MS. Book of Cerne, belonging to Ethelwald, BP. of Sherbourne, 760.
"When the Day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one
accord in one place"--I suppose the "all" will be not merely the
"twelve," but the "all" that were mentioned by S. Luke a few verses
before. He mentions the Apostles by name and then adds, "These all
continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women,
and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren."
We think of our Lady as sharing in the Pentecostal gift. This was the
first act of her ascended Son, this sending forth of the Holy Spirit
whom He had promised. It was the fulfilment of the prophecy: "I will
pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters
shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men
shall dream dreams." I do not know of anything in the teaching of the
Church to lead us to suppose that this gift was to the Apostles alone:
rather the thought of the Church is that to all Christians is there a
gift of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is imparted to the Church as such,
and within the organisation He functions through appropriate organs.
"There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit." Whatever the
operations of God through the Body of Christ, the same divine energy is
making them possible. "All these worketh that one and selfsame Spirit,
dividing to every man severally as he will."
That the Holy Spirit should manifest Himself in her life was, of
course, no new experience for S. Mary. Her conscious vocation to be the
Mother of God had begun when the Holy Ghost had come upon her, and she
had conceived that "Holy Thing" which was called the Son of God. And we
cannot think that the Spirit Who is the Spirit of sanctity had ever been
absent from her from the moment of her wonderful conception when by the
creative act of the Spirit she was conceived without sin, that is, in
union with God. But as there are diversities of gifts, so the coming of
the Spirit on Pentecost would have meant to her some new or increased
gift of God.
For the Church as such this coming of the Spirit meant the entrance of
the work of the Incarnation upon a new phase of its action. We may, I
suppose, think of the work of our Lord during the years of His Ministry
as intensive. It was the work of preparing the men to whom was to be
committed the commission to preach the Kingdom of God. They had been
chosen to be with Him, and their training had been essentially an
experience of Him, an experience which was to be the essence of their
Gospel and which their mission was to interpret to the world. "Who is
this Jesus of Nazareth Whom ye preach? What does He mean?" was to be the
question that they would have to answer in the coming years; and they
would have to answer it to all sorts of men; to Jews who would find this
conception of a suffering and rejected Messiah "a stumbling-block"; to
the Greeks who would find "Jesus and the resurrection" "foolishness"; to
all races of men who would have to be persuaded to leave their
ancestral religions and revolutionise their lives, and before they would
do so would wish to know what was the true meaning of Christ in whose
name their whole past was challenged. As we watch the perplexity, the
bewilderment, of these Apostles in the face of the collapse of all their
hopes on the first Good Friday, as we see them struggling with the fact
of the Resurrection, and attempting to adjust their lives to that; and
then listen to their preaching and follow their action in the days
succeeding Pentecost, we have brought home to us the nature of the
action of the Holy Spirit when He came to them as the Spirit of Jesus to
enable them to carry on the work that Jesus had committed to them.
We understand that the work of the Spirit was first of all the work of
interpreting the experience of the last three years. During these years
they had been with Jesus, and the result was an experience which,
however wonderful, or rather, just because it was wonderful, was in
their consciousness at present little more than a chaotic mass of
impressions and memories. It was the work of the Spirit to enkindle and
illuminate their understanding so that they could put the experiences of
the last three years in order, if one may put it in that way. He enabled
them to draw out the meaning of what they had gone through. We are at
once impressed with the reality of the work of the Spirit when we listen
to the sermon of S. Peter to those who have witnessed the miracle of
Pentecost. Here is another miracle of which we have, perhaps, missed
something of the wonder. This man who in answer to the mockeries of the
crowd--"these men are full of new wine"--stands forth to deliver this
exposition of Jesus is the same man who but a few days before had denied
his Lord through fear; he is the same man who even after the
Resurrection was filled with such discouragement that he could think of
nothing to do but to return to the old life of a fisherman, who had said
on a day, "I go a-fishing." If we wish to understand the meaning of the
coming of the Spirit, let us forget for the moment the tongues of fire,
which are the symbol, and read over the words of S. Peter which are the
true miracle of Pentecost.
And this action of the Spirit is not sporadic or temporary. We follow
the annals of the Church and we find the constant evidence of the
Spirit's power and action in the Christian propaganda. The courage with
which the Christians meet the opposition of Jews and Romans, in their
resourcefulness in dealing with the utterly unprecedented problems they
are called on to face, in the intellectual grip of the Apologists who
have to meet the criticism of very diverse sets of opponents, in their
rapidly growing comprehension of what the Incarnation means, and of all
in the way of action that our Lord's directions involve,--all these,
when we recall the antecedents of these men, lead us to a clearer
apprehension of the nature of the Spirit's work in the Church. As our
Lord had promised, He is bringing "all things to their remembrance" and
"leading them into all the truth." If we need proof of the constant
supernatural action of God in the Church, we get all we can ask in the
preaching of Jesus by His followers in these opening years of
their ministry.
I said that our Lord's work in the time of His ministry was intensive,
the preparing of instruments for the founding of the Kingdom. With
Pentecost and the coming of the Spirit it passes into a new stage; it
becomes _extensive_ in that it now reaches out to gather all men into
the Kingdom. To this end there is now a vast development of the
machinery (so to call it) of the Gospel, a calling into existence of the
means whereby Christ is to continue His action in men's souls. For there
must continue a direct action of Christ or the Gospel will sink to the
condition of a twice-told tale: it will be the constant repetition of
the story of Jesus of Nazareth Who went about doing good: and it will
have less and less power to be of any help to men as it receeds into the
past. Without the means which are called into existence to produce
continual contact between the Redeemer and the Redeemed we cannot
conceive of the Gospel continuing to exist as power.
This is not a matter of pure theory: it is a thing that we have seen
happen. We have seen the growth of a theory of Christianity which
dispenses wholly or nearly wholly with the means of grace, and reduces
the presentation of the Gospel to the presentation of the ideal of a
good life as an object of imitation. When one asks: "Why should I
imitate this life which, however good in an abstract way, is not very
harmonious with the ideals of society at present?" one is told that it
is the best life ever lived, the life that best interprets God, our
heavenly Father to us. If one asks: "What is likely to happen if one
does not imitate this life, but prefers some more modern type of
usefulness?" the answer seems to be: "Nothing in particular will
happen." In other words, the preaching of the Gospel divorced from the
means of grace tends more and more to decline to the presentation of a
humanitarian ideal of life which has little, and constantly less,
driving power.
We see then as we study the history of the early days of the Church the
constant presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the mode and means by
which the Gospel is presented. We see it particularly in the development
of the ministry and the growth of the sacramental system. It seems to me
not very important to find a detailed justification of all the things
that were done or established in explicit words or acts in the New
Testament. If we are dealing, as we believe that we are, with an
organism of which the life is God the Holy Ghost Who is the Vicar of
Christ in the building and administration of His Kingdom, I do not see
why we should not find in the action of the Kingdom as much of
inspiration as we find in its writings. I do not see why we should
accept certain things on the authority of the action of the early
Christian community, as the baptism of infants and the communion of
women, and reject others, as the reservation of the Blessed Sacraments
and prayers for the dead. Nor do I see why we should draw some sort of
an artificial line through the history of the Church and declare all the
things on one side of it primitive and desirable, and all on the other
late and suspect! Especially as no one seems to be able to explain why
the line should be drawn in one place rather than in another.
If the Holy Spirit was sent by our Lord as His Vicar to preside in the
Church, as I suppose we all believe, it was in fulfilment of our Lord's
promise to be with it till the end of the world and that the gates of
hell should not prevail against it. There is nothing anywhere in Holy
Scripture indicating that the Holy Spirit was to be sent to the
"primitive Church," even if any one could tell what the primitive Church
is, or rather when the Church ceased to be primitive. The Holy Spirit is
present as a guide to the Church to-day quite as fully as He was in the
first century. His presence then was not a guarantee that all men should
believe the truth or do the right, nor is it now. The state of
Christendom is a sufficient evidence of the ability of men to defy the
will of God, the Holy Spirit; but that does not mean that the Holy
Spirit has withdrawn any more than the state of things at Corinth which
called out S. Paul's two Epistles to that Church is a proof that God the
Holy Ghost never came or did not stay with that primitive Christian
community. The power of the Spirit is not an irresistible power, but a
spiritual influence which will guide those who are willing to be guided,
who will to be submissive to His will. But the will of God can always be
resisted--and always is. Nevertheless the Holy Spirit is in the Church.
He shaped and is shaping its beliefs and institutions: and to-day we
trust that He is leading us back to His obedience that we may at length
realize the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace.
The work of the Holy Spirit in the individual Christian is a
constructive work; it has in view the growth of the child of God in
holiness. He makes the soul of the baptised His dwelling-place and
wishes to remain there as in His Temple, carrying on the work of its
sanctification. The state of guiltlessness that follows absolution is
not the equivalent of sanctity. Guiltlessness is a negative, sanctity is
a positive state, and is acquired as the result of active correspondence
with the will of God. In order that there may be this correspondence the
will of God must be known, not merely as we know the things that we have
learned by rote, but known in the sense of understood and appreciated.
The will of God is knowable: that is, it has been revealed to man; but
it needs to be effectively made known to the individual man. He must be
convinced of the importance of divine truth to him. We know that just
there is the supremely vital point in the teaching of the truth. Men
assent to truth as true; but they are not thereby necessarily moved to
act upon it: it may remain unassimilated. The vast majority of the
people of this country, if they were questioned, would assert a belief
in God; but a surprising number of them are unmoved by that belief, are
led by it to no action. Or take the membership of any parish; they would
all profess a belief in the efficacy of the sacraments: yet there is a
surprisingly large number who do not frequent the sacraments. How many
of you, for example, make your confessions and communions with the
frequency and regularity that your theory about the sacraments implies?
Now it is the work of the Holy Spirit to effect the passage in life
from theory to practice, from profession to action. He illuminates the
mind that we may understand; He stirs the will that we may act. He aids
us to overcome the intellectual and physical sloth which is the
arch-enemy of Christian practice. He intercedes for us, and He pleads
with us that we may act as the children of God that we believe ourselves
to be. But all He can do is to entice the will; if we remain unwilling,
unmoved, He is ultimately grieved and leaves us. We may hope that that
despair of the Holy Spirit of a soul rarely happens because it is a
spiritual disaster awful to contemplate. In most men and women we can
see enough impulse toward God, enough struggle with evil, to encourage
us to think that the Holy Spirit has not utterly abandoned them. And it
is never safe for us to judge definitely of another's spiritual case;
but we do see lives that are so given over to malignancy that our hope
for them is an optimism which has small basis on which to rest.
In most we may be certain that there is going on a very active pleading
of the Holy Spirit. He is interpreting the meaning of the truth we
accept. He is present in a careful reading of the Bible, in meditation,
in devotional study. He receives of Christ and shows it unto us. I am
sure we ought to think more of this interpretative assistance of the
Holy Spirit in the work of understanding the Christian Religion,
especially in its application to the daily life. I am quite certain, and
I have no doubt that the experience of some of you, at least, will bear
me out, that it makes a vast difference in the results of our reading
and study if we undertake it under the direct invocation of the Holy
Spirit and with the conscious giving ourselves up to His guidance. We
have to make a meditation, for example, and we begin with prayer to God
the Holy Ghost for guidance and enlightenment. It is often well to let
that prayer run on as long as it will. It may be in the end that instead
of making the meditation we had planned we shall have spent the time in
a prayer of union with the Holy Spirit and will find ourselves refreshed
and enlightened as the result. There is need of that sort of yielding of
self to the promptings of the Spirit. I think that it not infrequently
happens that our rules get in the way of His action by destroying or
checking in us a certain flexibility which is necessary if we are to
respond quickly to the voice of the Spirit. As in the case just
mentioned where the Spirit is leading us to communion with Him we are
apt to think: "I must get on with my meditation or the time will be up
and I shall not have made it," and we turn from the Spirit and stop the
work that He was accomplishing.
He has so much to do for us, so many things to show us, so many grounds
to urge for our more earnest seeking of sanctity. The true point of our
Bible reading is that it is the opportunity of the Holy Spirit to
exhibit truth to us so that in us it will become energetic. We already
are familiar with the incidents of our Lord's Passion. If it be a matter
of knowledge there is no need to-night to take up the Gospel and read
the chapters which tell of the Crucifixion. There is not much point in
reading through a chapter as a matter of pious habit. It is
extraordinary how many there are who speak with contempt of "mediæval
prayers" such as the recitation of the Rosary, who yet "read a chapter"
once a day in the shortest possible time and with the minimum of
attention. We can think of all religious practices as opportunities that
we offer to God the Holy Ghost. The few verses of Holy Scripture we read
may well be the medium of His action upon us. He may give us new insight
into their meaning, He may stir our wills to correspondence with their
teaching, He may kindle our hearts by the evidence of the divine love
that He presses home. Who does not remember moments when new meaning
seemed to flash from the familiar pages, when we felt ourselves
convicted of inadequate response to the knowledge we have, or when we
felt our heart stir and send us to our knees in an act of
thanksgiving and love?
Our constant need is the clear knowledge of ourselves. We may, we often
do, see clearly God's will, and then we deceive ourselves as to the
nature of our response. We think we are seeking for God when in reality
we are seeking our own ends. We make our own plans and then seek to
impose them on the will of God. Self-seeking, which we mistake for
something else, is at the root of much spiritual failure. We try to
believe that God's will is our will, and we succeed in a measure. We
need therefore to be constantly examining ourselves by the revealed
standard of God's will, to let in the light of the Spirit on our
judgments and acts. For the struggle of the Spirit for control is a
struggle with a resisting and sluggish will. We see, but we do not
move; we know, but we do not act. The horrible inertia of spiritual
sloth paralyses us, and the call of the Spirit is heard in vain. Like
the man in our Lord's parable we plead the lateness of the hour, and our
unwillingness to disturb others as our excuse for not rising at the
Spirit's summons. But the Spirit, like the Friend at midnight, still
knocks at the door, and the sound of the summons penetrates the
quietness of the house and breaks in upon our slumbers. Well is it for
us if in the end we rise and open to Him.
It is only as we thus become energetic by the yielding to God of our
wills that He can go on to His desired work. The aim of God in dealing
with our lives is creative. He wills that we bring forth fruit, and the
fruit that He wills that we bring forth is the Fruit of the Spirit. The
general notion of holiness analyses into these qualities which are the
evidence of God's indwelling, of His actual possession of the soul. When
the soul yields at last to the divine will and begins to follow the
divinely indicated course of action, then it loses self and finds God,
then the results begin to show in the growth of the character-qualities
that we call fruits or virtues. The presence or the absence of these is
infallible evidence of the Spirit's success or failure in His work in
us. If we abide in Christ, then the natural results of such abiding must
be forthcoming. "I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in
me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye
can do nothing."
A vine bears fruit because it assimilates the natural elements which
are furnished it by the Providence of God through earth and air and
water, and works them into the fruit which is the end, the meaning of
its existence. Our Lord through the constant operation within us of the
Holy Spirit gives us the spiritual power to work over the endowments of
nature and the opportunities of life into the spiritual product which is
holiness. We can just as well, and perhaps easier, work up the same
natural elements into a quite different product. The result of our
life's action may be that we can show the works of the flesh. But what
is the will of the Spirit, S. Paul sets before us in these words: "For
when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. What
fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the
end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and
become the servants of God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the
end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God
is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
Any adequate self-examination, therefore, bears not only on our sins,
our failures, but on our accomplishment. A tree is known by its fruits;
and fruits are things which are evident to all men. If indeed the work
of the Spirit in us is love, joy, peace and the rest of the fruits,
these qualities cannot be hid. Certainly they cannot be hid from
ourselves. They are the evidence to us of precisely where we stand in
the way of spiritual accomplishment. And we must remember that they are
supernatural qualities, and not be deceived by the existence in us of a
set of human counterfeits. Love is not good-natured tolerance; joy is
not superficial gaiety, peace is not clever dodging of difficulties. The
fruits of the Spirit are not of easy growth, but come only at the end of
a long period of cultivation, of energetic striving. But like all the
gifts of God they do come if we want them to come. "If ye abide in me,
and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be
done unto you." But when we ask our Lord for gifts we must remember that
the giving is not a mechanical giving. What our Lord gives is the Might
of the Spirit to effect what we desire. If a man ask of God a good
harvest the prayer is answered if there be given the conditions under
which a good harvest can be produced; it will not be produced without
the appropriate human labour. And when we ask of God the Fruits of the
Spirit the prayer is granted if the conditions are given under which
this Fruit may be brought forth. But neither here may we expect Fruit
without appropriate action on our part. God gives, but He gives to those
who want.
I
others do of grace bereave, When, in their mother's womb, they life
receive, God, as his sole-borne Daughter, loved thee: To match thee like
thy birth's nobility, He thee his Spirit for thy Spouse did leave, Of
whom thou didst his only Son conceive; And so was linked to all the
Trinity. Cease, then, O queens, who earthly crowns do wear, To glory in
the pomp of worldly, things: If men such respect unto you bear Which
daughters, wives and mothers are of kings; What honour should unto that
Queen be done Who had your God for Father, Spouse and Son?
II
Sovereign of Queens, if vain ambition move My heart to seek an earthly
prince's grace, Show me thy Son in his imperial place, Whose servants
reign our kings and queens above: And, if alluring passions I do prove
By pleasing sighs--show me thy lovely face, Whose beams the angels'
beauty do deface, And even inflame the seraphins with love. So by
ambition I shall humble be, When, in the presence of the highest King, I
serve all his, that he may honour me; And love, my heart to chaste
desires shall bring, When fairest Queen looks on me from her throne, And
jealous, bids me love but her alone.
III
Why should I any love, O Queen, but thee, If favor past a thankful love
should breed? Thy womb did bear, thy breast my Saviour feed, And thou
didst never cease to succour me. If love do follow worth and dignity,
Thou all in thy perfections dost exceed; If love be led by hope of
future meed, What pleasure more than thee in heaven to see? An earthly
sight doth only please the eye, And breeds desire, but doth not satisfy:
Thy sight gives us possession of all joy; And with such full delights
each sense shall fill, As heart shall wish but for to see thee still,
And ever seeing, ever shall enjoy.
IV
Sweet Queen, although thy beauty raise up me From sight of baser
beauties here below, Yet, let me not rest there; but, higher go To him,
who took his shape from God and thee. And if thy form in him more fair I
see, What pleasure from his deity shall flow, By whose fair beams his
beauty shineth so, When I shall it behold eternally? Then, shall my love
of pleasure have his fill, When beauty's self, in whom all pleasure is,
Shall my enamoured soul embrace and kiss, And shall new loves and new
delights distill, Which from my soul shall gush into my heart, And
through my body flow to every part.
HENRY CONSTABLE: 1562-1613.
PART TWO