God The Holy Ghost part 47.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

Under such a heavy fire from the Gospel batteries, is it not amazing how unbelievers in the divinity of the Holy Ghost will not bring themselves to capitulate but rather fatuously resist "faith in the Holy Ghost." The concrete reality! well, they simply will not have it. With all their superbly trained faculties, unsparing energies and tireless researches in the byways of erudition, thick-webbed attics and musty storehouses of knowledge—history, science, philosophy and the rest—one sees the gratuitous labor of a voluntarily selected circuitous route in making the acquaintance of truth, which, by some singular phenomenon, seems alarmingly distasteful to un-Catholics and which if men were more congruously set up, less devilishly recalcitrant and more docile, would be more comprehensible by the easy and short route of a simple faith in an infallible, truth-teaching church:—"Go teach all nations." "Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world." Confession of the truth has to be dragged and beaten out of their mouths, and what is more, they seem to covet error just as the life-long miser fastens his bony fingers around his bags of jingling ducats. To us, who justly bask in the glint of the shepherd's glance, the cry rises up from the dunes and deans, from the valleys, the gorges and hillcrest's of inspired leaves, calling us to pay our dues of adoration, of respect, of love, of obedience to the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, to admit and realize His identity and to slight Him no longer; for, of all possible manners of acting endowed with power to wound the feelings, indifference cuts the deepest. It remains, therefore, that we shall in the future not be deaf and dumb to the Holy Ghost, but with jubilant ardor, on the contrary, reinforce the value and beauty of our daily lives with the faithful discharge of our special devoirs toward the August Third Person.

God The Holy Ghost part 46.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

CHAPTER X.

PARTING GLIMPSES OF THE DIVINITY OF THE HOLY GHOST.

The Father, Son and Holy Ghost comport themselves always in concert. The divine nature is one and indivisive with all its perfections; its action is one and indivisible, in the three Persons, in every point that lies outside the inner circle of the hypostatic relations of the three to one another, that is, their individualistic being. In other words in the irradiant relationship called technically works ad extra, there is one and indivisive action on the part of God— unity of workmanship, so to speak. Now the Holy Ghost does the same things and puts into operation the same powers as the Father— which means, of course, that the Holy Ghost is in nature and essence God. Because the Father and the Holy Ghost do the same things, in view of the fact, as we have said, that there is, and can be, but one action in God, the Holy Ghost thus acting in concert with the Father must be imbedded or ingrained in the divine unity. To make good His title to divine sonship and at the same time clear Himself of the charge of blasphemy, which was drawn up against Him, our Lord formulated the aforesaid reasoning in these words:—"If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not, but if I do, though you will not believe Me, believe the works that you know, and believe the Father is in Me and I in the Father." (John x, 37, 8.) The same principle applies in the ease of the Holy Ghost —"Believe the works." Now what about the premise of fact? Does the Holy Ghost perform the works of the Father and thereby make good the divinity of His essence? Let us reverently go in the Scriptural forest. Here we find, right off, our Lord's words to the effect that the Father sanctified Him—"Do you say of Him Whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world," (John x, 36) and, close by,we come upon the same thing which the Master predicates of the Holy Ghost—"The spirit of the Lord is upon Me. Wherefore He hath anointed Me—He hath sent Mo." (Luke iv, 18,19.) The Holy Ghost operates the "sanctification" and "sending" as well as the Father. The two texts are clear; their fore-echo can be distinctly caught upon the lips of Isaias—"The Lord God hath sent me and His spirit." (Is. xlviii, 10.) Then, again, in conjunction, the Father and the Holy Ghost wrought the "Incarnation" of the Lord. St. John says, "God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh." (Rom. viii, 3)—So much for the Father. "For that which is conceived in her, is of the Holy Ghost," quoth the angel. (Matt, i, 20.) Unity of action in such a purely divine achieve merit plainly demonstrates that the Holy Ghost is divine in nature. In the miracles with which our Lord startles mankind we can trace the hands, so to speak, of the Father and the Holy Ghost clasped in unity of action —"But the Father Who abideth in me, He doth the works." (John xiv, 10.) Yet we find our Lord saj's again "I by the spirit of God cast out devils." (Matt, xii, 28.) We find the Father and Holy Ghost, hand in hand again, so to speak, in the world's tragedy in the oblation of the Son of Man. St. Paul says, "He that spared not even His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all." (Rom. viii, 32.) Of the Holy Ghost the apostle says,

"How much more shall the blood of Christ, Who by the Holy Ghost offered Himself up unspotted to God." (Heb. ix, 14.) The vine, the tendril and the crushed grape— Father, Son and Holy Ghost! The Father and the Holy Ghost are the counter gravity, drawing forth the deceased Messiah from His death-lodging and the enfolding mortuary drapery to the skies and life in joyous unity contemning alike earth's gravitation and the stratagems of malignant counter activity and vigilance decided upon imprisoning him beyond hope in a dungeon of stone and clay. "Being exalted therefore by the right hand of God and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost." (Acts ii, 33.) At the same time the "resurrection" and "postmortem life" of the Messiah is imputed to the Third Person,—"The spirit of Him that raised up Jesus Christ from the dead dwell in you." (Rom. viii, 2.)

These texts have a marked, indisputable Trinitarian flavor. They unveil the inner and mutual attraction of the Third Person in the unity of Godhead. Altogether, then, from such a conclave of luminant and star-like textual evidence we can remain no longer free to dispute unity of action in the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The practical conclusion forces itself into the foreground that the Holy Ghost is on a level with the Father and, therefore, coequal, co-living and co-true, co-wonderful, co worshipful, co-lovable and co-worthy of world-praise. Yet, alas, this august personage is in a sense, not indeed in theory, I grant, but for all that, on point of practical realization, a sort of shunted and neglected individualism showing in our lives as a dimly discerned presence, as a figure veiled in thick haze, a mummy-like factor, existent but not a living, vascular, pulsating power, impressing its personality upon the thoughts and actions; the Holy Ghost is a sort of closeted dogma—of course it is confessed in theory every day, yes, many times a day, as, for example, in the Sign of the Cross and the Gloria Patri, but, it is, for all that, to a certain extent, as far as being a living force, an unused one; yet the grace of God, by which the soul lives, is his very breath; the incentive to good stirring and quickening the soul to spiritual action is the effect of His indwelling in us or His seeking to dwell in us. He is the very atmosphere of the souL that lives. The action of His grace is, however, noiseless as the snowflake falling on the earth or the undulations of a light-wave. Encased in the invisible mist He treads our lives, and, yet, He is a tremendous personalism, a great heritage, a living ontological organism, a necessity to our souls seen by those who have eyes to see, heard by those who have ears to hear. As a matter of fact the divinity of the Holy Ghost has not been merely demonstrated but positively emphasized. Brought into comparison with our Lord's humanity, the Holy Ghost takes precedence in dignity. It, of course, must be clear to any one that no creature, who is such and nothing more, could, without grave blasphemy, claim for himself superiority over even the humanity of our Lord. The revealed fact, therefore, that, when gauged from the standpoint of His mere humanity, the Holy Ghost is superior to our Lord proves beyond any reasonable doubt that the Holy Ghost is not a creature merely, but, on the contrary, a really and truly divine being, the Saviour's equal, when viewed in His divine nature. All this is made clear from the fact that it is a more grievous sin to err against the Holy Ghost than against Christ as man,— "Whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven them, but he that shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world nor in the world to come." (Matt, xii, 32.)

God The Holy Ghost part 45.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

The Council of Trent calls the hierarchy of the Church, "an army set in battle array." Obedience is its law. It has its commander-in-chief, its generals, its captains, its lieutenants and its soldiers of the rank and file. What a wonderful army! It keeps the field against the world; it has its deserters, of course, through mixed marriages—for which our weak women are responsible—and leakage from other causes, but, it also has its recruits, that often more than counterbalance the defections. Popes pass away, bishops die, priests vanish from the scene of life, the faithful live out their day; the places of all are taken by others— the Holy Spirit abides with her "all days" unto the end. This is the conquering army that will enter the gates of heaven and seize the throne of God. It is the army organized by Jesus Christ and inspired with a heavenly patriotism by the Holy Ghost. The battle-song of the Church is the Veni Creator] "He that will be proud and refuse to obey the commandment of the priest.... that man shall die and thou shalt take away the evil from Israel." (Deut. xvii, 12.)

The Emperor Basil addressed the Fathers assembled at the Eighth General Council to this effect: "As regards us lay people, whether we be titled dignitaries or not, all I have to say is that we have no right whatever to mix ourselves in church affaire or to resist the whole Church or set ourselves up in opposition to the General Council, inasmuch as the examination of such questions belongs to the pontiffs and priests who have the care and governance of the Church, who have received the power to sanctify, bind and unbind, and who hold in their hands the keys of the Church and heaven, and not to us whose condition demands that we should be governed, sanctified, bound and unbound by them. Howsoever pious and wise a layman may be, were he endowed with all manner of virtues, so long as he is only a layman he ceaseth not to be a sheep; on the other hand, no matter how wanting in religious or personal piety a bishop may be, how void he may be of every manner of virtue, so long as he is a bishop and preaches the word of God with exactness he does not part with his pastoral qualities nor with the privileges of his dignity. What right then can we, the poor sheep of the fold, have to oppose our quibbles to the teaching of our pastors and to seek after what is above us out of sheer ambition? We should, consequently, gather in their words with a sincere faith and respect and show our veneration for them as minister's of the all-powerful God and depositaries of so great a power, and right here we should stop and claim for ourselves nothing beyond this. In place of doing so we find to-day a good many laymen letting themselves be carried away by their perversity to such a degree of folly that, forgetting their positions and paying no attention to the fact that it does not belong to the feet or nether members to direct the eyes of the head, they go in an opposite direction to the fitness of things and, whilst displaying an extreme negligence in the matter of correcting themselves on the point of vice, with which they might very well reproach themselves, they show an extreme ardor in drawing up accusations against those who are above them. I warn and pray all who are of such character to set aside all envy and malice and instead of making themselves judges, aye, judges, to amend their own ways by taking for their rule the will of God. But if they refuse to do so they cannot escape from judgment on high or the anger of heaven or the just vengeance which the Sovereign Judge will exercise toward them." Sound advice! God and Caesar, the tiara and the crown—there must be no conflict here. "For matters earthly I have my sword," said Napoleon, "this is enough of power for me. For the things of heaven we have Rome, and, Rome will pass judgment upon such things without consulting me, and she will be within her rights in so doing; this is part of her rights." (Rome 1848, 9, 10.)

In nations where the authority of the hierarchy and clergy is upheld, respected, carefully and sensitively obeyed by the faithful we find a deep catholicity, a pure faith and a solid holiness. I might cite Ireland and the Tyrol as shining instances of this hallowing and hallowed disposition. The direct fruitage of this disposition is the Holy Ghost's pouring Himself out in corresponding measure. Let us then always respect the divinity of religious supremacy like the noble Fenelon in France and the illustrious liberator and statesman O'Connell in the little Green Isle.

God The Holy Ghost part 44.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

Infirmities in the shape of spiritual rulers give ground for tears and sighs, for prayer and compassion with the founder of the Church, and yet our respect, love and obedience to our pastors should go on in unimpaired fidelity. This obedience of course does not imply that one may not, or should not, in an humble and prudential way, after sage advice, point out to the proper charge d'affaires a scandalous abuse. I am aware that from such a path an humble man shrinks with chilling dread, yet, after all, one ought not to have an unenlightened charity nor a false idea of duty. Anything, of course, that could resemble a deliberate espionage or officiousness would imply conceit. The abuse should thrust itself upon one. There are some whose theory is to praise dumbness —which means, let evil run its course—and rebuke those who, in the interests of religion, and only after wise reflection and advice, vouchsafe, from a sense of duty, an humble protest. Such a theory is built upon an exaggeration. St. Catherine of Genoa and St. Catherine of Sienna support the theory of respectful protest as examples from their lives clearly demonstrate. It remains, however, a fact that authority is sacred and that the Holy Ghost animates it in the Church. Whether or not Savonarola in his zeal for righteousness in rulers was affected in his personal obedience to authority is rather the providence of the critical historian. If this were the fact, he was not a wise person nor a really holy man. It can never be a matter of dispute that supremacy is holy. It has without exception the right to our respect, love and fealty. What circumstances have entered into the choice of rulers in the Church or what qualities the elect may or may not have does not change the internal relationship of power. It represents to us the selection of the Holy Ghost. This is enough for us to know. A ruler's personal life may be the antipodes of the Holy Ghost's ideal and yet we are bidden by our Lord to do as the Scribes and Pharisees say, as being in their several official capacities the lamps of God.

 To disobey an ex-Cathedra utterance of the Church is heresy; to disown the voice of superiors in discipline is mutiny and rebellion. The more a subject can confine and direct bis vision and intercourse within the realm of his superior's official person, the purer will be his docility, the more christian his life and the more fruitful, peaceful and suave will be his obedience.

God The Holy Ghost part 43.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

Pausing again in our ascent to the mountain of knowledge we might rest the heart for a little while and minister to it some food and drink or perhaps give it a little tonic. Let us, for the present, supply such practical thought as is ready to hand. Love, respect and obedience to lawful ecclesiastical authority is essential to a vigorous and healthy religious constitution. The blood channels of the human body are frail, delicate organisms and, yet, they are ordained to contain the very life-principle — the blood. The vesture of authority may be gauze-like in its human aspect. One chosen to control may have defects and yet at the same time one cannot have too much faith in the Holy Ghost Who is concerned in the matter. Lawful superiors are His appointed channels and the oracles of God's will. "Let every soul be subject to higher powers, for there is no power but from God: and those that are, are ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God. And they that resist, purchase to themselves damnation." (Rom. xiii, 1, 2.) 

The Bishopric, especially in its sovereign head, is the more direct work of the Holy Ghost; at the same time the clergy stand to God if not in the closer relation of the jugular vein at least in the relationship of a remote and tiny artery. The Holy Ghost certainly exhorts rulers, "not to be lifted up," but "to be among them as one of them." (Ec. xxxiii 1.) St. Peter enjoins humility of sway upon the ghostly sires of souls, and, the Fathers of the Church, for example St. Ambrose, St. Gregory, St. Bernard and St. Jerome inveigh against the spirit of "titled churchmen," (In. cap, 18. Ezech.) all of which is testimony that official arrogance and a service jarred, aye paralyzed, by the motive of lucre may be a trial for our obedience, respect and love. God permits these things, however, and, whilst the Lord censures such distortion of power and such deflection from pure motives in His minister, we are not justified in a course of disobedience, insubordination or censoriousness. The Holy Ghost is, none the less, resident in the Church and in authority, , so to speak. It is most sadly illogical for one to try to separate the Church in the abstract from the visible, human-clad, divine authority. Such discrimination seems to be the logic of the so-called reformers.

God The Holy Ghost part 42.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

If there are vast numbers who have not the true faith, this cannot be woven into an argument against the divinity of the Church or in favor of discrimination on the part of the Holy Ghost. It is on the other hand I should think a melancholy evidence, and a sad argument, of the world's indisposition.

Says St. Thomas:—"It is the function of divine Providence to provide each and every one with the requisites toward salvation, as long as no impediment on their part is made to stand in the way. If any one,—for example, a savage in the forest—obediently follows the leading of his natural reason in the matter of desiring what is good, and avoiding what is bad, we cannot but most certainly maintain that God, by internal inspiration, will reveal to him all that is necessary in point of believing or that He will send across his way some preacher of the faith, as He sent Peter to Cornelius." (St. Thomas de veritate,) "

Although one cannot on the strength of his own free will merit or acquire divine grace, one may nevertheless prevent himself from receiving it."—"Inasmuch as it is in the power of one's own free will to impede or not impede the reception of divine grace, one justly has the guilt laid up against him when he lays an obstacle in the way of receiving grace." (Idem Contra Gent. lib. 3, c. 159.) The apostle said, when addressing the clergy of Ephesus:—"Take heed to yourselves and the whole flock, wherein the Holy Ghost has placed you bishops to rule the Church of God." (Acts xx. 28.) To the Holy Ghost, therefore, the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church owes its marvellous force, its triumphs and indefectibility, that resistance to hell's portals, which was prophesied by Our Lord. Yes, "If it be of God you cannot overthrow it." The wondrous preservation of the Church then, through the ages, flashing the radiance of her chariot wheels on every generation and her triumphal onward sweep in the face of the furious gale of mortal passion and a thrice resented restriction on human liberty mark beyond the shadow of doubt her superhuman magnetism, force and character and emphasize the divinity of the Third Person, in Whose keeping her Founder has placed her. To meet all emergencies and changed conditions, the Holy Ghost inspires holy founders with a counter-spirit. These chosen souls raise regiments recruited from such persons as are adapted to the special work projected and are attracted individually by the Holy Ghost, by the spirit and purpose embodied in a particular religious rule.

The priesthood and religious life are under the dominance of the Holy Ghost both in their personnel and ministrative aspect. "Let no man take unto himself that honor, unless He be called as Aaron," that is drawn by the spirit. No one I fancy would be rash enough to obtrude himself upon the sanctuary or monastery without a conviction, ratified by the tribunal of penance, that the inward voice is the voice of the Holy Ghost calling Him.

There can be no doubt of the wisdom displayed in the vast ecclesiastic system, spiritual, moral, ethical, social, industrial massed in a solid economic unity and world-wide in its scope without peril of disrupting that same unity, like so many arteries in the physical body. It only needs the doing of his own part by each one before we should witness the conquest of the kingdom of God made, in a measure, complete. All the forces of the Church must be united and riveted together in a bond of the deepest, most fervid sympathy and effective cooperation. If the divine rhythm is at times somewhat blurred, this happens because an individual player does not follow his score as the Holy Ghost has written it on his conscience and in His institute or because through undisciplined zeal a player tampers with the score or thumps out a man-written note or in conceited virtuosity enlarges on his own part with the result of an inharmonious phrasing. If we but examine we shall find that thumping out a false note amounts to about the same as omitting a right one.

To play one's own part of life's score perfectly is all God requires of any one. If a musician has half his fancy occupied with the scoro and execution of another player he cannot avoid making mistakes. If we wish after these incidental remarks furthermore to emphasize the divinity of the Holy Ghost, we might summon attention to the fact that though every species of creature, human and angelic, has been invoked in Holy Scripture to sound forth the praise of God, the Holy Ghost is not to be found anywhere on the list. The canticle of the three youths in the book of Daniel covers all creation, 3 T et the only mention made of the word spirit is the one where David speaks of it in the sense of the "wind"—"Stormy winds". (Ps. cxlviii.) St. Paul in his first Epistle to the Colossians, and St. Peter also, enumerates the very highest creatures— "the angels and powers and virtues." (I. Peter iii, 22.) Now if the Holy Ghost were but a mere creature, as the heretical allege, He must needs have found mention in the Scriptural lists, which, as we have remarked, runs the scale, the whole gamut of creatures with its octaves, simple, double and triple.

God The Holy Ghost part 41.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

Every day eminent personages, like Cornelius the Centurion, of earlier date, and Newman, in more recent times, come over to Rome. How is the fact explained?

The Spirit said to Peter, "Behold three men seek thee... I have sent them." (Acts x.) The Holy Ghost draws these souls to the true Church; it is the Holy Ghost Who gives them the uplifted vision and the righteous heart craving together with the courageous boldness to breast the tirade of the scoffer and the bludgeon of the persecutor in the shape of social ostracism and preclusion from lucrative situations. Why does the Holy Ghost not draw the rest of men by that same grace? St. Paul answers this question —"because you rejected it; and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life." (Acts xiii, 46.) "While Peter was speaking these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all of them." The divine electricity is in the word of God, spoken and preached by the lawfully appointed teachers of Christianity, but to get into touch with the current there must be an absence of all obex or of all nonconductors. This means that one has to be properly disposed. Disposition effects the wire connection as the case of Cornelius effectively demonstrates. When the Holy Ghost came to him he was prepared and rightly disposed; his soul was open to the truth and docile toward it, and his spirit was even more than this, it was brave—he sought the truth, he had to have it and he dallied not over the consideration of what the truth might cost him— "Immediately, therefore, I sent to thee," said he to Peter: I have no will in this matter I await the voice of God, the pleasure of heaven, the will of my Maker. I stand expectant to know what my duty is and am set upon its speedy, effective execution—"all we are present in Thy sight, to hear all things, whatsoever are commanded of thee by the Lord." (x, 33.) Hearken to the word ye rebels "whatsoever are commanded of thee by the Lord." The secret of the Church's unflagging endeavors, of her power over mankind, ought to be clear on the point of a supernatural superhuman origin and appeal to the common sense of the world. Gamaliel pondered wisely whilst his fellow-countrymen, the Jews, were intent upon strangling the infant Church and engaged in dissipating the prodigies of the Holy Ghost—how well the Jew spoke and how profoundly:—"If it be of God, you cannot overthrow

it." (Acts v, 39.) The Holy Ghost is that electricity of infinite voltage, generated in the dynamo of the Church out of her sacramental machinery. She cannot be resisted—she is of God. When Christ ascended, His heavenward flight created a suction —'the Holy Ghost drawing and absorbing all manner of men, in all times, by His grace. The voice of the Church is the voice of God; the Holy Spirit proceeds from her. "And as they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Ghost said to them: 'Separate me Saul and Barnabas, for the work whereunto I have taken them.' So they being sent by the Holy Ghost, went to Selucia.—They preached the Word of God." (xiii, 2, 3, 4, 5.) The apostles never acted in council on their own judgment, but in prayer and fasts they sought out and fully trusted to the authoritative voice, the help and inspiration of the Holy Ghost; they followed the compass. This fact is very perceptible from the words, "It hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and us." (Acts xv, 28.) And again, "they were forbidden by the Holy Ghost to preach the word of God in Asia," and farther still from the words, "they attempted to go into Bythinia, and the spirit of Jesus Christ suffered them not." On the other hand, the Macedonians attracted the electrical bolt in the person of St. Paul. The apostle was vouchsafed a vision in the night. It was a certain man of Macedonia standing and beseeching him, and saying, "pass over to Macedonia and help us." (v. 9.) "Being assured," said St. Paul, "that God hath called us to preach the gospel to them." (Acts xvi, 6.) This apparent discrimination on the part of the Holy Ghost as between the Macedonians, Bythinians and Asiatics provides us with opportunity for a very important observation. The faith is given to those who have proven themselves disposed thereunto by doing what shall have lain in their power and come within circle of their light. God wishes sincerely, earnestly, as only a God of love can, to see all men saved, but, it must be understood that the human will is free.