By Henry Aloysius Barry
Let Us take up once more our journey Sion-ward: "The pastor will accurately explain to the faithful that the Holy Ghost is God so as to be the Third Person in the divine nature, distinct from the Father and the Son and produced by their will." (Catech. Trent, p. 68.)
If it be the pastor's duty to teach, that is to say, break unto his children the bread of life, it is a corollary that the faithful should hear and heed the words, ponder them and extract the strength that lies in them, in one word, eat the bread, not merely taste it but masticate and assimilate it. I say "bread;" in these days of the higher criticism, bread but rudely expresses the food of the soul. Perhaps one should say "chocolate eclaires" or "angel's ringers." This is hyperbole, of course, and, yet, on the other hand, we have a right to expect that the bread offered us hungering children of God will be duly kneaded and baked and not given to us in such a form as makes no appeal to one's appetite or as, when eaten, will prove a disorder and embarrassment for the digestive organs. The functions of natural life are made pleasurable so as to attract one to life.
Culinary subtlety and taste should operate in the matter of heaven's food. A dainty dish provokes the sluggish appetite, like the Son, of the divine substance and truly God, be he accursed." These are the words of Damasus addressed to Paulinus, Bishop of Antioch, A. D. 378. The Council of Constantinople added in the year 378 these words to the Nicene Creed:—"We believe—also in the Holy Ghost,Lord and Life-giver, Who doth proceed out of the Father, Who in conjunction with the Father and the Son is to be adored and glorified, Who spake by the prophets." Ah, how reassuring is our mother's voice. Doubt and uncertainty vanish at the sound of it. Truth rises like the glorious orb of day in clear unclouded radiance out of the enfolding gloom. Reject this faith in the Catholic Church and you sweep away the symbol of Catholic confession of faith, aye, says St. Augustine, "I should not yield credence to the Gospel, had not the authority of the Catholic Church moved me thereunto."
For though the symbol, the Gospel and the rest of the divine writings contain w hat is revealed and the Word of God upon which in its last analysis our faith reposes, these sources always leave room for doubt and uncertainty without the voice and authority of the Church. Still within the luminant shade of the Three-in-One, still we tread in wonderland! Aye, reason is dumb before faith; the Church supplies the motor power to the lips that confess there are three Persons in one God; hence it is reasonable.
If we use the sublime truths which faith sets before us we can all find something practically strengthening, tissue-making, in them, but, to succeed in the matter one has to put the tablet, as it were, under one's tongue and let it slowly, pensively and reverently dissolve. If the pastor is not free to label certain virtues because of their paramount mysteriousness "wholesale" and to dispense them with grandiose platitude and glittering generalities, without merging them into detail and making for them practical application, neither ought the faithful to consider themselves free to put away in the cupboard these tremendous phenomena or relegate them to the store room, as if they had no particular purpose to serve in our lives. After these preliminary remarks, let us resume our theme:
The Socinians and Rationalists make of the Holy Ghost a spectral, shadowy, impersonal and unsubstantial thing. The Socinian has in his blood the crystals of the Rationalist, whose boast is antagonism to all that is not wholly within the bounds of unabetted self-sufficient natural reason. It holds in abhorrence the view of the supernatural held by men of faith. "If one there be who shuns to aver that the Holy Ghost is in truth and properly
Let Us take up once more our journey Sion-ward: "The pastor will accurately explain to the faithful that the Holy Ghost is God so as to be the Third Person in the divine nature, distinct from the Father and the Son and produced by their will." (Catech. Trent, p. 68.)
If it be the pastor's duty to teach, that is to say, break unto his children the bread of life, it is a corollary that the faithful should hear and heed the words, ponder them and extract the strength that lies in them, in one word, eat the bread, not merely taste it but masticate and assimilate it. I say "bread;" in these days of the higher criticism, bread but rudely expresses the food of the soul. Perhaps one should say "chocolate eclaires" or "angel's ringers." This is hyperbole, of course, and, yet, on the other hand, we have a right to expect that the bread offered us hungering children of God will be duly kneaded and baked and not given to us in such a form as makes no appeal to one's appetite or as, when eaten, will prove a disorder and embarrassment for the digestive organs. The functions of natural life are made pleasurable so as to attract one to life.
Culinary subtlety and taste should operate in the matter of heaven's food. A dainty dish provokes the sluggish appetite, like the Son, of the divine substance and truly God, be he accursed." These are the words of Damasus addressed to Paulinus, Bishop of Antioch, A. D. 378. The Council of Constantinople added in the year 378 these words to the Nicene Creed:—"We believe—also in the Holy Ghost,Lord and Life-giver, Who doth proceed out of the Father, Who in conjunction with the Father and the Son is to be adored and glorified, Who spake by the prophets." Ah, how reassuring is our mother's voice. Doubt and uncertainty vanish at the sound of it. Truth rises like the glorious orb of day in clear unclouded radiance out of the enfolding gloom. Reject this faith in the Catholic Church and you sweep away the symbol of Catholic confession of faith, aye, says St. Augustine, "I should not yield credence to the Gospel, had not the authority of the Catholic Church moved me thereunto."
For though the symbol, the Gospel and the rest of the divine writings contain w hat is revealed and the Word of God upon which in its last analysis our faith reposes, these sources always leave room for doubt and uncertainty without the voice and authority of the Church. Still within the luminant shade of the Three-in-One, still we tread in wonderland! Aye, reason is dumb before faith; the Church supplies the motor power to the lips that confess there are three Persons in one God; hence it is reasonable.
If we use the sublime truths which faith sets before us we can all find something practically strengthening, tissue-making, in them, but, to succeed in the matter one has to put the tablet, as it were, under one's tongue and let it slowly, pensively and reverently dissolve. If the pastor is not free to label certain virtues because of their paramount mysteriousness "wholesale" and to dispense them with grandiose platitude and glittering generalities, without merging them into detail and making for them practical application, neither ought the faithful to consider themselves free to put away in the cupboard these tremendous phenomena or relegate them to the store room, as if they had no particular purpose to serve in our lives. After these preliminary remarks, let us resume our theme:
The Socinians and Rationalists make of the Holy Ghost a spectral, shadowy, impersonal and unsubstantial thing. The Socinian has in his blood the crystals of the Rationalist, whose boast is antagonism to all that is not wholly within the bounds of unabetted self-sufficient natural reason. It holds in abhorrence the view of the supernatural held by men of faith. "If one there be who shuns to aver that the Holy Ghost is in truth and properly
