Fourth Sunday After Easter
18 May 2014
“For if
I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you, but if I go, I will send him to you.” Jn. 16:7
During this
Eastertide, the Church prepares us for the coming of the Holy Spirit. In his
book, , Divine Intimacy, Fr. Gabriel,
OCD. tells us: “Only Jesus’ death could merit this great gift for us, and it was not until
after His Ascension into heaven that the Holy Spirit, the Envoy of the Father
and the Son, could descend upon the
Church.” ( p. 503) The Apostles
were about to lose the physical presence of their beloved Master, but Jesus would
not leave them orphans; He would send them His Spirit who would teach them all
things: “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my
name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your mind whatever I have said
to you.” Jn. 14:26 Jesus, by His
passion and death, had conquered sin and death and merited for the
Apostles and His Church the coming of the Holy Spirit. Fr. Gabriel tells us: “The sending of the Holy Spirit to our souls is the principal fruit of
the Passion of Jesus.” Gabriel, Ibid. p. 504
In today’s Epistle (Jas. 1:17-21), St. James tells us that the
best way to prepare ourselves for the coming of the Holy Spirit is to avoid
sin: “Therefore,
casting aside all uncleanness and
abundance of malice, with meekness receive the ingrafted word, which is able to
save your souls.” Ja. 1:21 Whoever has the truth and the light of
Christ rejects sin; such is the first lesson of the Holy Spirit.
“And
when he has come, he will convict the world of sin, and of justice and of
judgment: of sin....because they do not believe in me.”Jn. 16:8-9
Msgr. Patrick Boylan in his book, “The Sunday Gospels and Epistles,”
tells us that the Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin: “Our
Lord had challenged His enemies to convict Him of sin—but the world will itself
be convicted of sin by the Spirit-aided
preaching of the Apostles. The sin which the world will be shown to have
specially committed is the sin of unbelief. The preaching of the Apostles,
aided and confirmed by the Holy Spirit, will bring home to the adversaries of Christ the sin they
have committed in rejecting Him.”
“Convicted....
of justice, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no more.” Jn. 16:10
“The
Paraclete (Advocate, Holy Spirit) will also convict the world of its folly in
regard to justice. It had looked on Jesus as a profaner of the Sabbath and
blasphemer: but the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ will be used by the
Spirit to prove that Christ is indeed
the Just One, and the Chosen One of God.
The charisms of the Spirit and the growth of Christ’s Church will help
to show its divine character and thus completely to vindicate its Founder. Thus even though the disciples must give up the joy of having Jesus visibly
with them, their deprivations will
ultimately help to establish the greatness and holiness of their Master.
“Convicted...
of judgment, because the prince of this world has already been judged.”
Jn. 16:11
“In
the third place the Paraclete will show the world to be wrong in regard to ‘judgment.’ The enemies of Jesus had
believed that, with the death of Jesus,
their case against Him had been finally established. The Paraclete will show
that it is they who have been condemned,
with their leader, the Devil, ‘the Prince
of this world.’ (cf. Jn. 12:31)
“Good triumphs over evil”
“The Paraclete
will prove, therefore, that the ‘world’ is sinful, that justice (righteousness)
is on the side of Christ, and that condemnation of the powers of evil has
definitely begun. To the ‘world,’
then, belongs sin: to Jesus belongs
justice and (the) verdict of victory.
Thus, in a word, it will appear after the coming of the Spirit that good
triumphs over evil, that holiness ultimately judges sin, and Christ condemns
and overthrows Satan.” (cv. Lk. 10:18,
11:22) Boylan, Ibid. p. 50
Apostles enlightened by the
Holy Spirit
As Jesus had said, “...he will teach you all things”
(Jn. 14:26). The Holy Spirit will enlighten and strengthen the Apostles to
understand all that Jesus has spoken to them. “The Holy Spirit is the Spirit
of Truth: He brings truth home to the minds of men. He will guide the Apostles
into the full truth: He will lead them gradually but steadily towards the full
comprehension of Christ, Who is Truth itself.
“The ‘full truth’
is not fullness of knowledge of nature or history, but Christ---‘the Way and the Truth’ Jn. 14:6. The Spirit is the guide who points the way to
the Truth. (cf. Ps. 25:5 & 57:7) To the Spirit is here assigned the work
which in the Psalter (Psalms), belongs to the Spirit of Yahweh. ...The Spirit will announce what is to come.
He will make known through the Apostles the new economy which will begin at
Pentecost.
The Holy Spirit ‘convicts’
the world today.
“As the Jews
rejected Christ in the Apostolic Age, so others reject Him in our day, and as
the Jews foolishly believed that they had overthrown Christ and destroyed His
work, so there are groups of men—even large sections of nations—today who aim
at destroying Christ’s work, and representing it as useless, if not noxious,
for humanity. In spite of all these new enemies of Christ, the life of the
Church goes on, and is deepened and widened, and its capacity to adapt itself
to every need of the time becomes every day more obvious. Now, therefore, as in the Apostolic days, the
Holy Spirit is showing up –‘convicting’—the world in regard to justice. ...The
daily sacramental life, and the never-ceasing spiritual growth of the Church,
are the Holy Spirit’s answer to false teaching and persecution—whereby He
‘convicts’ the world of ‘judgment.’” Boylan,
Ibid.,
p. 52-3
May is the Month of Mary:
Our beloved Holy Father Pope St. John Paul II showed how the Holy Spirit is
active in our families if we pray together: “The Christian family finds and consolidates its identity in
prayer. Make the daily effort to find a
time to pray together, to talk with Our Lord and listen to his voice. How
beautiful it is when the family prays in the evening, even though it be only a
part of the Rosary. ‘The family that
prays together stays together’; a family that prays is a family that is
saved. Act in such a way that your home
may be a place of Christian faith and virtue through your praying together.” (Address
to families, 24 March 1984)
May
Crowning and Consecration
On Sunday 25
May 2014, we will have a May Crowning of Our Lady and a Consecration to
the Immaculate (according to St. Maximilian Kolbe) at our Lourdes Grotto after
Mass. This is a most important devotion
as it honours Our Holy Mother during her special Month of May, and
it binds us to her as her special “possession
and property.” St. Maximilian Kolbe
spoke of all those who are consecrated to the Immaculate “She penetrates our soul and directs its faculties with unlimited
power. We truly belong to Her. Therefore, we are with Her always and
everywhere...”(SK 461)
And further
still: “We are Hers, of the Immaculate,
unlimitedly Hers, perfectly Hers, we are, as it were, Her very self. She, by
means of us, loves the good God. She, with our poor heart, loves Her divine Son. We become the means by which the Immaculate
loves Jesus, and Jesus, seeing that we are Her property, a part, as it were, of
His most loving Mother, loves Her in and through us. What beautiful mysteries!” Sk 508
St. Maximilian declared that those who are
consecrated to the Immaculate would be a means of holiness and grace to others
(especially their own family): “She needs to be brought into all hearts,’
so that She,
upon entering into these hearts,
may give birth there to the sweet Jesus, to God, and bring Him up even
to that perfect
age. What a beautiful mission!”
SK508
St. Louis de
Montfort tells us of Total Consecration to Mary: “This devotion consists, therefore, in giving ourselves entirely to the
Most Blessed Virgin that, through her we may belong entirely to Jesus Christ.
We must give her: (1) our body with all its senses and members; (2) our soul
with its powers; (3) our material possessions and all that we may acquire; (4)
our interior and spiritual possessions—our merits, our virtues and our good
works, past, present, and future; in short, all that we possess in the order of
nature, in the order of grace …” St. Louis de Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed
Virgin Mary, p. 88-9
