By Father James, O.F.M.Cap.
1—A NEW EPOCH
It must have been an impressive scene on the day when Jesus stood up for the first time in the Synagogue of His native Nazareth. As yet He was unknown ; He had not studied under any of the approved teachers ; He was simply “ the son of a carpenter.’* Imagine their surprise when He signalised His intention of taking the reading : all eyes were fixed upon Him.
Unfolding the book of the prophecies, He read : “ The spirit of the Lord is upon me ” When He had finished the reading, He bound up the scroll again, handed it back to the attendant . . . there was an expectant silence. Into that silence, like a clap of thunder, fell the words: “This day is fulfilled this Scripture in your ears.”
With an eloquence full of dignity He expounded first the text and then, by way of climax, He returned to His original affirmation. The reign of Evil, He declared, was at an end . . . Could it be possible ? Could it be that this young Man, upon whose countenance they gazed enraptured, was the beginning of a new epoch ? We now know that this precisely was the truth. By the overshadowing of the Virgin, immaculate and unspotted, Jesus had been conceived in His human nature. And from that moment until his final breath on Calvary, Jesus was utterly and entirely under the empire of the Spirit of God. With more literal truth than they could then have suspected did He proclaim in their midst : “The spirit of the Lord is upon me...”
With an artistry of their own the Evangelists announce this truth as the motif of of the Master’s life on earth. “And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost” remarks St Luke, “returned from the Jordan and was led by him into the desert And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit, into Galilee.” Through all their phrases, like a musical theme, runs the power of the Spirit by which Jesus accomplished all he came to do. And Saint Paul, who was not an associate of the earthly ministry, takes up the self-same theme and adds his voice in magnificent unison. This is how he describes the saving death of the Master: “For if the blood of goats and of oxen and the ashes of a heifer, being sprinkled sanctify such as are defiled, to the cleansing of the flesh : How much more shall the blood of Christ, who by the Holy Ghost offered himself unspotted to God, cleanse our conscience from dead works, to serve the living God.”
The climax thus evoked sends back the mind to those first moments when, inaugurating His ministry, Jesus went down into the waters of the Jordan to be baptised by John. “I saw the Spirit coming down as a dove from Heaven.” relates the Baptist, “and he remained upon him.” This was for the Baptist's benefit and ours. Jesus had not to await the age of thirty to receive the Spirit. He came to His baptism, as Saint Augustine remarks, without sins and therefore not without the Holy Ghost. But it was important that, visibly and externally, He should receive consecration and that the great prophecy of Isaiah should be fulfilled : “And there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse : and a flower shall rise up out of his root. 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.” Jesus had come, as He said, to cast fire upon the earth and the fire that would renovate the earth of humanity was the fire of the Holy Spirit.
PART II
Love of the Holy Spirit
in an
Exhortation
“But I tell you the truth : it is expedient to you that I go. For if I go not, the Paraclete will not come to you: but if I go, I will send him to you ” —John XVI. 7.
It must have been an impressive scene on the day when Jesus stood up for the first time in the Synagogue of His native Nazareth. As yet He was unknown ; He had not studied under any of the approved teachers ; He was simply “ the son of a carpenter.’* Imagine their surprise when He signalised His intention of taking the reading : all eyes were fixed upon Him.
Unfolding the book of the prophecies, He read : “ The spirit of the Lord is upon me ” When He had finished the reading, He bound up the scroll again, handed it back to the attendant . . . there was an expectant silence. Into that silence, like a clap of thunder, fell the words: “This day is fulfilled this Scripture in your ears.”
With an eloquence full of dignity He expounded first the text and then, by way of climax, He returned to His original affirmation. The reign of Evil, He declared, was at an end . . . Could it be possible ? Could it be that this young Man, upon whose countenance they gazed enraptured, was the beginning of a new epoch ? We now know that this precisely was the truth. By the overshadowing of the Virgin, immaculate and unspotted, Jesus had been conceived in His human nature. And from that moment until his final breath on Calvary, Jesus was utterly and entirely under the empire of the Spirit of God. With more literal truth than they could then have suspected did He proclaim in their midst : “The spirit of the Lord is upon me...”
With an artistry of their own the Evangelists announce this truth as the motif of of the Master’s life on earth. “And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost” remarks St Luke, “returned from the Jordan and was led by him into the desert And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit, into Galilee.” Through all their phrases, like a musical theme, runs the power of the Spirit by which Jesus accomplished all he came to do. And Saint Paul, who was not an associate of the earthly ministry, takes up the self-same theme and adds his voice in magnificent unison. This is how he describes the saving death of the Master: “For if the blood of goats and of oxen and the ashes of a heifer, being sprinkled sanctify such as are defiled, to the cleansing of the flesh : How much more shall the blood of Christ, who by the Holy Ghost offered himself unspotted to God, cleanse our conscience from dead works, to serve the living God.”
The climax thus evoked sends back the mind to those first moments when, inaugurating His ministry, Jesus went down into the waters of the Jordan to be baptised by John. “I saw the Spirit coming down as a dove from Heaven.” relates the Baptist, “and he remained upon him.” This was for the Baptist's benefit and ours. Jesus had not to await the age of thirty to receive the Spirit. He came to His baptism, as Saint Augustine remarks, without sins and therefore not without the Holy Ghost. But it was important that, visibly and externally, He should receive consecration and that the great prophecy of Isaiah should be fulfilled : “And there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse : and a flower shall rise up out of his root. 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.” Jesus had come, as He said, to cast fire upon the earth and the fire that would renovate the earth of humanity was the fire of the Holy Spirit.
