By Henry Aloysius Barry
The song of the valley suffices me. Thick walled flesh and swollen streams of blood keep my poor soul an exile from its true home. In its dungeon cell, unlit by the light of the Holy Ghost, it loses its spiritual mind. The rapt David yearningly prayed, "One thing I have asked of the Lord, this thing I will seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord, all the days of my life." Ah, no! you hear no song of heaven, no voice which only the soul can hear, because you are in need of the Holy Ghost. "The spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole world, and that which containeth all things hath knowledge of the voice." (Wisdom, i, 7.)
True, the heavenly vision is denied to mortal eyes, though faith-ravished; true, its chant is muffled; still, we can grow in vision, by the influx of the Holy Ghost, ever increasing and striving to reach the level of its source, "as your heavenly Father is holy."
Jerusalem was unveiled to prophets and apostles to illumine them, to direct and captivate us. So saith St. Augustine: — "Behold what manner of praise we are expected to show Jerusalem; rather are we to foretaste the Jerusalem which we will one day praise. The voice of the prophet does not exhort and excite us to such praise of yonder city as will be ours when we shall see and love and praise. But it is clear the prophet's meaning is that, so far as we may in this flesh of ours, the future joys of the elect, belching forth in our ears, shall fire us with a love of that city. Let us be afire with the yearning of it, and be we not sluggish of spirit." (In. Ps. cxlvii, 11, 8.) Come, Holy Spirit, kindle in us the fire of Thy divine love! "The sensuous man perceiveth not these things, that are of the spirit of God. This is the doctrine of the spirit." (I. Cor. ii, 18, 14.) All revelation demands faith. But St. Paul speaks of a particular belief in the Holy Ghost.—" To another faith, faith in the same spirit." (I. Cor. xii, 8.) Faith without the particular cultivation of the Holy Ghost would leave us soul-paintings in distorted, blurred outlines as in a very old canvas. Holy Scripture needs to be read under the Spirit's light, to vivify its ideas,to make its historic and prophetic, celestial and terrestrial scenes realistic and its personages living, breathing things. "O, all ye religious, bless the Lord, the God of Gods, praise Him and give Him thanks." (Dan. iii, 90.) Are we to exclude the Holy Ghost from these praises and thanks? Is it not His mercy like-wise, that endureth forever and forever? (v, 90.) Does not mercy come from the love of God, and is not the Holy Ghost love? "God so loved the world, as to give His only begotten Son to redeem it." Does not faith teach us that the Holy Ghost, as God, created us; that He preserves and sanctifies us? Where is our gratitude? Not from a furnace heated with brimstone and tow and pitch and dry sticks that soon expire in cold ashes, but, from eternal soul-torturing fires hath He, as God, delivered us. He personally pronounceth our eternal glory — "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. From thence forth now," saith the Spirit, "that they may rest from their labors." (Epoc. xiv, 13.) The saints are no strangers to that voice; oft have they heard it in prayer; they were ever grateful and mindful of the Holy Ghost.— "Blessed art Thou, O Lord, God of our fathers"— not the Arians' god, not the Socinians', not the Deists', with the rest of the heretical basilisks, nay, the God of our Father, in one nature and Three divine Persons, "Worthy to be praised and glorified and exalted," says Daniel, (iii, 52.), "the Holy Ghost"— Who together with the Father and the Son is subject of adoration and glory," says the Council of Constantinople. Mine is, then, a duty of praise toward the Holy Ghost, a christian obligation for this faith is not the hermit's, any more than the work-a-day christian's in kind. The foundation of the duty is put forth by the Catechism of Trent.—"We must acknowledge the Holy Ghost to be God." Have an eye out for His personal presence, study Him, know Him. "Have faith in the same spirit." Knowledge of God breeds light, and light leads to love. The liturgy perspires, so to speak, with this acknowledgment in antiphon,—the sequel to every psalm, in versicle, in hymns and introits of the Mass, after practically every prayer, the mind of the Church is made clear and her design to engrave the Holy Ghost, no less than the Father and Son, indelibly on our lives. Echoed and reechoed in the Church of God, is the "Glory be to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost." I shall cultivate the habit of acknowledgment toward the Holy Ghost, I shall see God in Three divine Persons and call upon all creation, upon angels, sky, waters, powers, sun, moon, stars, showers, dews, heats, cold, ice, nights, days, upon all priests and holy souls to praise the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
