God The Holy Ghost part 40.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

The dominant fact of the world is the perpetuity of the Church. Every other institution under the sun has undergone organic variation, if not utter extinction. But the Church has not compromised on the point of her deposit of faith. In the very teeth of kings and emperors, from Nero of Rome to Henry of England, —men who were impatient to give her a death blow,— she never faltered in confessing her faith. She has seen the rise and fall of many dynasties, she sees the tombs of heresy, and heretics, of false philosophies and philosophers, and as by dint of ambrosial liqueur, like a young giantess she confronts new generations, new systems, new conditions, new inventions, with a confidence whose origin it would be sagacious and profitable if the universal world would only bring itself to accept. The good such realization achieved would more than compensate for the violence thus wrought to their feelings. Herod sought her in her cradle with murderous design—"Herod, a king, stretched forth his hand, to afflict some of the Church." The life of the persecutor went down in a violent and bloody evening —"for with an angel of the Lord struck him, because he had not given the honor to God, and being eaten up by worms he gave up the ghost." (Acts xii, 23.) The revolting spectacle of a man whose very bowels fell out of him makes the name of Arius a reminder of that dread and secret power that guards the Church from error within as well as harm without—a power, O ye nations! it does not pay to antagonize. Tracked by human wolves the christian sheep and lambs have had to burrow into the earth like worms—a bloody heirloom, whose heritage has passed on to other places from Rome to Erin and Poland, to the lands of Patrick and Nepomucene whose turn has come to pay to the living God their worshipful duties, to be sealed with the tessera of spiritual vitality—to be branded as nations of Christ. But persecution has been to her as the kindly shower of April, irrigating her faith and insuring abundant harvest.—"The Word of the Lord increased and multiplied." When her children have emptied their veins, having bled to death, their very persecutors as Saul, their very executioners and the wives and children of their slayers have replenished the depleted ranks of the martyred dead. Where is the secret of this wonder of ages? There must be in the Church some principle that is not found elsewhere. Fanatics of the rustic type, under rabid tutelage and preaching— self-condemning, from its tone of envy and acidity, inasmuch as such qualities as are here displayed cannot have an origin in the meek and charitable Christ, cannot be prompted by the love of God—such fanatics, I repeat, in the wheat-fields of western America, in the hamlets of New England, in the suburbs of Edinboro, or in the shires of Old England, poisoned with bitterness toward their fellow christians, ascribe the secret power of the Church to Beelzebub. Statesmen impute it to her natural military system, to a naturally wise social system. A vast number of men impute the perpetuity of the Church to a superstitious turn, a sort of disposition to be duped. This contention is veiled somewhat by the term, eccentricity. These samples of reasoning, alas, avow insincerity and self-deception on the part of many outside the Church. It is the old story of the unfair man, who, when arguments do not serve his end, will not shrink from recourse to vilification. When the ranks of the Church are shown to be recruited out of the best brawn, highest culture and purest blood of every land, such reasoning is altogether pitiable. In what terms can we classify that disposition of vision which denies the perpetuity of the Church? It is not known to the vocabulary of reason. When the Holy Ghost descended at Pentecost wonders of speech excited comments— "what meaneth this?" says one, but others mocking said, "these men are full of new wine."

God The Holy Ghost part 39.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

The martyrdom of St. Irenaeus

St. Irenaeus—(adv. haeres, 3, 16)—makes the remark that neither Our Lord nor the Holy Ghost nor the apostles employ the name of God in a definite, absolute way except to have it apply to the true God—"I am the Lord thy God, Who brought thee out of the land of Egypt." (Exod. xx, 2.) Yet Isaias the prophet, referring to this same occurrence, says: "The spirit of the Lord was their leader." (lxiii, 14.) Is not, then, the divinity of the Holy Ghost diaphanous?

"You slighted the commandment of the Lord thy God, and did not believe me." (Deut. ix, 23.) Alluding back to this indiscretion the prophet Isaias says of the Jews: "They afflicted the spirit of His Holy One." Nicetas, St. Jerome and St. Athanasius, following the Septuagint, here render the text: "They afflicted the spirit of the Holy Ghost." The prophet David says: "The spirit of the Lord hath spoken by me and His word by my tongue.

The God of Israel said to me, the strong one of Israel spoke." (II. Kings xxiii, 3.) Here we find the Holy Ghost called out and out God, the God of Israel. "I saw the Lord," says Isaias, "sitting upon a throne, high and lofty, and He said to me, 'Go, and thou shalt say to these people, hearing, hear, and understand not, and see the vision and know it not.'" In referring to this, St. Paul says: "Well did the Holy Ghost speak to our Fathers by Isaias the prophet, saying, 'I go to this people, and say to them, with the ears you shall hear and shall not understand, and seeing you shall see and shall not perceive.'" (Acts xxviii, 25, 26.)

Let us now veer off to the consideration of the divine attributes. Under this head we find, first of all, "Immensity." "Do I not fill heaven and earth?" (Jer. xxiii, 24.) We find in the second place "Goodness" —"None is good but one, that is God." (Mark x, 18.) The Douay annotation reads: "None is good of himself entirely and essentially, but God; men may be good also, but only by participation of God's goodness." (Inf. pag. Mark.) We find next on the list of divine attributes "All-powerfulness " —"And there is no other almighty God besides Him." (Tobias xiii, 4.) We find in the next place "Wisdom"—"And of His wisdom there is no number." (Ps. clvi, 6); "God the only wise." (Rom. xvi, 27.) Now, no creature could possibly have these attributes, and yet the Holy Ghost does, as a matter of fact, possess them. Let us see— "Immensity " belongs to Him—"the spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole world." (Wis. i, 7.) "Goodness " belongs to the Third Person—"O how good and sweet is Thy spirit, O Lord." (Wis.xii, 1.) "Thy good spirit will lead me into the right land." (Ps. cxlii, 10.) "How much more will your Father in heaven give the good spirit to them that ask Him." (Luke xi, 13.) The Holy Ghost is "omnipotent"—"The spirit of understanding—having all power." (Wis. vii, 2, 3.) "Wisdom" is an attribute of the Holy Ghost;—"the spirit searcheth all things, even the profound things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man but the spirit of a man that is in him? So the things that are of God no man knoweth, but the Spirit of God." (II. Cor.ii, 2, 3.) Add to these attributes the "resurrection" and "vivification" of the body, which is plainly a divine work—"He that raised up Jesus Christ from the dead, shall quicken also your mortal bodies because of His spirit that dwelleth in you." (Rom. viii, 12.)

God The Holy Ghost part 38.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

CHAPTER IX.

DIVINITY OF THE HOLY GHOST FURTHER CONSIDERED.

We do not expatiate at greater length on the divinity of the Holy Ghost as insinuating that our minds are still haunted by any shadow of doubt on the matter in hand, but, rather to have impressed upon us by Holy Scripture, and tradition, the co-prominence of the August Third Person with the Father and Son as involving, in its persistent appeal, the larger necessity, on our part, of imbuing our daily lives with the thyme-scented aroma of His breath.

The Socinians and Deists are at pains to inform us that the divinity of the Holy Ghost was unknown to the dogmatic thought of the Church previous to the Council of Constantinople, A. D., 381. As a matter of fact, however, the Council of Nice, sitting in the year 325, had put forward this doctrine, in sufficiently explicit and luminous terms, in its symbol—"We believe in the one God, Father Almighty—and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and we believe also in the Holy Ghost." The Three Persons are clearly set forth without difference and on a par with each other. Proofs positive on the point revert as far back as Christianity itself. In the second century, the church of Smyrna—Ep. n. 14.—wrote to the Philadelphians, to the effect that St. Polycarp, when on the verge of martyrdom, gave glory to God the Father, to Jesus Christ the Son and to the Holy Ghost. St. Justin in his first apologia (n. 6) writes down: "We honor and adore the true God, the Father, the Son and the prophetic Spirit." Lucian, author of the dialogue Philopartris, brings in a christian in the act of inviting a catechumen to swear by the Most High God, by the Son of the Father, by the Spirit which proceedeth from Them, Who make the One in Three and the Three in One —"Lo!" he adds, "the true God!" St. Iranaeus entertained this belief as his commentators show, (Disert. iii, Art. 5.) Athenagoras goes on in the same strain. (Legat. Pro Christ, n. 12, 24.) St. Theophilius of Antioch— (lib. ii, ad.) Autolyic n. 9, assures us that the prophets were inspired by the Holy Ghost, that is to say, by God. In the third century St. Clement of Alexandria brought his book on the pedagogies to a close, with a doxology addressed to the three divine Persons. Tertullian refuted the heretics for accusing the christians of adoring three gods. He assures them that the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity are but One God, (Qontra Praxeas C, ii, iii, xiii.) Origen contributes his testimony in the same doctrinal direction, (Ep. ad. Rom. iv, 9; vii, viii, 5, etc.)

In the fourth century, St. Basil sets out to show the divinity of the Holy Ghost from the testimony of those who had lived in the three preceding centuries. He cites a passage from St. Clement of Rome, disciple of the apostle at first hand; he insists that the doxology was in vogue throughout the length and breadth of the Church and disowns being aware of its origin. This formula maintains the perfect equality between the Three divine Persons by rendering an equal honor to the Three. Other religious customs go to confirm this credence in the divinity of the Holy Ghost. One might choose as a specimen of these customs the triple immersion at baptism, and, as we elsewhere observed, the very formula itself of baptism.

We have, furthermore, the Kyrie Eleison thrice repeated for each person, and, still again, the Trisagion of the Liturgy.

The Arians strove energetically, though vainly, to suppress this Trisagion. It had come down from the apostles because we find it. in Apocalypse, eighth chapter, that bewitches the sight with the picture of the Christian Liturgy under the figure of eternal glory. This is how the most ancient religious usages are martialled forward to proclaim from the housetops the venerable antiquities of our christian dogma and to do duty as commentaries on the the Holy Scriptures. (Bergier Die. Theo. Dog. Art Sanct. Sp.)

God The Holy Ghost part 37.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

Like Sidrach, Misach, Abdenago, we are cast in the midst of flames, the fiery passions of boiling lusts; earth is a cauldron. Where is our song of praise, our soul-felt thanks for deliverance in holy consultation of these devout youths ?" And the fire touched them not at all, nor did it harm them." (Dan. iii, 50.) Hence the great poem of praise that burst forth from their lips to the God Who sustained them. What practical hope have we in the moral flames, "and hope confoundeth not." "The charity of God is poured forth in your hearts by the Holy Ghost." (Rom. v, 5.) Our triumphs we owe to grace, which comes to us in the Person of the Holy Ghost—the charity of God. Witnessing then these victories in our life through the Holy Ghost, let us say with Nabuchodonosor: — "The most high God hath wrought signs and wonders toward me. It hath seemed good to me therefore to publish His signs because they are great, and His wonders because they are mighty." (Daniel, iii, 100.)

God The Holy Ghost part 36.

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.

God The Holy Ghost part 35.

By Henry Aloysius Barry

The doxology derived from the very earliest periods—Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian— accords the same glory to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. A battalion of text marches out of the patristic armories keeping step to the same air. The formula of baptism, however, furnishes the Fathers with arguments especially felicitous in the way of proof of the divinity of the Holy Ghost. The main force of this weapon is found in the coupling and conumeration of the Holy Ghost with the Father and Son in this "fundamental" rite of salvation, one wherein man is washed of stain, regenerated, sanctified, made peculiarly the property of God. To feel the weight of this fact, fully, it is to be observed that if the name of the Holy Ghost were to be omitted from the baptismal formula, the sacrament is not bestowed —it would be null and void. It is to be noted, also, that the Three Persons are invoked in one, unseparated, common name. From these data on the necessity of the coupling of the Holy Ghost with the Father and Son in so great a work, aye indispensable, it clearly follows that the Holy Ghost has the same authority and power, honor and majesty, in one word, the same divinity as the Father and Son, for, baptism administered in the name of creatures would be spurious. To baptize in the name of an apostle or even Our Lady would not be valid. "Was Paul then crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?  I give God thanks, that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius and lest any should say that you were baptized in my name." (I. Cor. i., 13, 14, 15.)

Our Lord would not have put a creature on a par with God. "Go teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." (Mat. xxviii, 19.) And as St. Basil remarks, "we should baptize only in the name of the true God, and the Holy Ghost would not make us children of God, by grace and baptism, if He Himself were not true God." (Adv. Eunon. lib. 111.)

How the evidences of the divinity of the Holy Ghost fall upon our upland path like leaves of autumn, nay, blossoms of spring, for they are living things to us. Now we have reached a plateau, and after wading in morasses of arguments have come to a mountain-lake where we contemplate the image of the heavenly-Three. "We see now through a glass, in a dark manner, but then face to face, now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known." (I. Cor. xiii. 12.) Let us muse over the grandiloquent reflection. It is a vital matter, touching faith, justice and truth, that we profess and confess the divineness of the Holy Ghost.—" I believe in the Holy Ghost." "There are Three Who give testimony in Heaven; the Father, the Word and the Holy Ghost, and these Three are One." (I. John v. 11.) I adore the Holy Ghost—true and Jiving God. "Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost." The assent of my mind unites with the pulse of my heart and the two in spirit and truth unite themselves to the hosts of heaven in that solemn trisagion— "Holy, holy, holy!"

Ah! angels and saints concord in that mighty chorus; out of the symphonic interblending, mergent in melodic wonders, I catch the interlacing, now and then, of the various melodies in the distinct phrasing of each chorus-band, pouring out their spirits with quenchless ardor, with a force majestic and solemn, enchanting, infinitely soothing and each carol variant with the number of heavenly mansions, distinct with its own particular theme, formed on the character, life, gifts and works of the particular choristers. Mighty and tumultuous is that chorus, higher and higher, broader and broader, deeper and deeper the waves of sweet and terrible sonority rise and swell, now revealing, in clear sweet treble, the lily-vested innocents in their ruby mantles and tiny coronets, now the counter-tones, cavern-like, thundering, of the patriarchs and prophets in luxuriant, snowy beards.

Louder the swell and ever louder, torrents of song pour out from the mansions of glory, and ever louder sweep along through the golden paved avenues of the heavenly Jerusalem and rise to the arches of space, shaking its translucent pillars of diaphanous alabaster and falling in fearful volume like as if all the force and full extent of the mighty ocean were transubstantiated in sound, whose thundering volleys float and roll themselves against the throne of the one living God, in Three divine Persons, and receding bear away on its out-rolling music-waves the saints and angels of God, in a spray of sweet Sabbath, of exquisite, eternal bewilderment. Not in a Nirvana, but in a tremendous, inspired, lofty activity of worship and love —eternal "life." The Church sees and reflects this panorama of bliss in her apostrophe to her saints, —"O! blessed man, in whose exit the saints deliver themselves of song, choirs of angels wax gladsome and the whole army of celestial virtues are in choral attendance." (Resp. Lect. 7th martyrs.)—"Hark," says Daniel, "and you shall hear the sound of the trumpet and of the flute, and of the harp and of the sackbut, and of the symphony and of all kinds of music." (Dan. iii.) But it is not to the false God of Nabuchodonosor on the plains of Judea that this vast choir and orchestra rushes onward; nay, but to the one living God—Father, Son and Holy Ghost, of Whom it is truly said, "If any man shall not fall down and adore, he shall be cast into a furnace of living fire." (Dan. iii, 6.) St. Paul, emerging from the third heaven, reminds us "that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, such beautiful things as heaven has in store for us." St. John has drawn a tableau of the heavenly Jerusalem in dazzling colors; its unrivaled magnificence stuns the being. — " The glory of God hath enlightened it, and the Lamb is the lamp thereof." The Holy Ghost, the gift of the Lamb, floods the heavenly city with sheen and harmony. Alas! the sluggish soul, the carnal spirit, catches no unearthly sound, it strains not its ear. In vain has the angel of God called to it to view in spirit the heavenly Jerusalem and to hear its liquid chant. The walls of my soul are cold and barren. No picture of heaven, no portraits of it painted in words by the Son of Man and His apostles and retouched by the fathers of the Church ornament the walls.—"And I, John, saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride for her husband." (Apoc. xxi, 2.) "And he took me up in spirit to a great high mountain, and he showed me the holy city of Jerusalem." (v, 10.)

ST. TERESA OF THE INFANT JESUS

(Rev. Butler's section titled: "Lives Of Certain Saints Contained In The Calendar Of Special Feasts For The United States And Of Some Others Recently Canonized")

MARIE-FRANCOISE-THERESE MARTIN, known as "The Little Flower of Jesus," was born at Alencon. France, on January 2nd, 1873. Reared in a home of comfort and surrounded by refinements that would have spoiled an ordinary child, Teresa's intelligence had an early dawning which enabled her to comprehend the Divine Goodness far in advance of her tender years. Our Lord visited upon the child a severe trial--a strange malady from which there seemed no recovery. Her implicit confidence in God, however, overcame her infirmity and she progressed rapidly toward sanctity.

Teresa adopted flowers as the symbol of her love for her Divine Saviour and offered her practices in virtue, sacrifice, and mortification as flowers at the feet of Jesus. At fifteen she entered the Carmelite Convent at Lisieux, France, where she distinguished herself by punctual observance of the rule, burning love for God and wonderful trust in Him.

Before she died, this "lily of delicious perfume"--as Pope Pius X. called her--revealed to the superiors her life story in pages of rarest beauty.

She died in the odor of sanctity on September 30th, 1897, at the age of 24. Since her death countless graces have been attributed to her intercession. Pope Benedict XV. in 1921 opened the way for the process of her beatification and she was declared Blessed by Pope Pius XI. on April 29, 1923, and was canonized on May 17, 1925.