HOLY SPIRIT, MARY AND THE CHURCH by ANOSIKE PATRICKMARY

 HOLY SPIRIT, MARY AND THE CHURCH.

ANOSIKE PATRICKMARY OF HIS REAL PRESENCE CONCEPT

Everything in Catholic Christianity tells us, that the Holy Spirit is the Third Person of the blessed Trinity, that He is one in nature with the Father and the Son, and that He existed from all eternity.

The best way to understand what the Church understands by the Holy Spirit is to compare it with what we believe about the Son of God. In God there is an intellect and will, corresponding to our faculties of thinking and loving in human nature. Sacred Scripture and Tradition identify the mind of God with the Word of God. That is why St. John tells us, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Jn 1:1). “Consequently, just as the word of God is the Son of God, so the Love of God is the Holy Spirit” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Exposition of the Apostles’ Creed, Article 8).

Who exactly is the Holy Spirit? He is one in substance with the Father and the Son. No less than the Son is the Wisdom or the Word of God, so the Holy Spirit is the Love of the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit proceeds from both persons. God’s Wisdom is of one substance with the Father. So God’s Love is one in substance with the Father and the Son.

Once we believe in the perfect equality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son, we are logically to worship Him equally with the First and Third Persons. That is why St. John declares that “true adorers shall adore the Father in Spirit and in Truth” (Jn 4:23). This is also the reason why Christ told His disciples to “teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19). In biblical language, the name stands for the nature. Thus the three Persons of the Trinity have only one divine nature. To make sure there is no doubt about the perfect equality of the divine Persons, the Nicene Creed has the statement about the Holy Spirit, “who together with the Father and the Son is equally adored and glorified.”

Except for the Holy Spirit, there is nothing which God has revealed that we could believe. It was the Holy Spirit whom Christ promised when He said, “The Holy Spirit, the Paraclete (Advocate), whom the Father will send in my name, will Himself teach you all things and will bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you” (Jn 14:26). It was Jesus Christ, the first Advocate, who revealed the mysteries of God. But it is the Holy Spirit, the second Advocate, who enables us to understand what Christ had revealed.

It is not enough to believe what Christ has revealed, nor even enough to understand the mysteries of divine revelation. We are to put our faith into practice. This means we must observe the commandments with our wills. That is why, already in the Old Testament, God foretold that “I will put my Spirit in the midst of you.

And he first put the Spirit in Mary through her faith which resulted in her conception of Jesus Christ the head of the church.

When we say that Mary is the Mother of the Church, we first of all mean that she is the Mother of Him who instituted the Church:

who is the invisible Head of the Church.

who suffered and died on the Cross to confer grace on the Church.

who made the Church what she is, the universal sacrament of salvation.

who, together with us His members, forms the Mystical Body which is the Church.

This, then, is the first meaning of Mary's title. She is the Mother of the Church by giving us the One, without whom there would be no Church.

This bears emphasis. God had to become man to bring into being the Church He instituted. And it was Mary who gave Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the human nature that the Son of God assumed, and assuming became Incarnate, and being Incarnate, then proceeded to incarnate the Church.

Moreover, when we say that Mary is the Mother of the Church we mean that she, in her own way, always subordinate to Christ, contributed to the forming of the Church.

She was the Mother of Christ not only in giving Him birth, but through all His years at Nazareth, then in Palestine during His public ministry, and especially on Calvary.

And again, with emphasis, Mary was uniquely appointed Mother of the Church by her Son as He hung upon the Cross. As we have heard so often, but never too often to repeat, the apostle John represented all of us when the Savior told him, "Behold your Mother". She is therefore Mother of the Church by a clear, unique and irrevocable designation. It was the dying Redeemer who told her to care for us as her children; and told us to look upon her as Our Mother.

The place and occasion were perfect: Under the Cross for Mary, and on the Cross for her Son.

Mary is never more important as our Mother than when we are under, perhaps best under our cross, in our effort to be like her Son.

Once again, Christ decided to go to heaven ahead of His Mother. There was a reason. He wanted her to remain on earth for some fifteen years (as tradition has it) before her own Assumption. Why? So that, just as she had been Mother to the Physical Christ together with the Holy Spirit her beloved spouse, she might continue as Mother of the Mystical Christ, His Church also with the Holy Spirit, in the Church's infancy . And the history of the young Church as described in the Acts of the Apostles and the Letters of Saint Paul surely needed a Mother's loving care and the Presence of the Holy Spirit.

Mary continues to Mother the Church from heaven, where she is our powerful intercessor with her Divine Son as well as the Holy Spirit the advocate. Saints tell us that just as Christ is the universal Mediator with the Heavenly Father, so Mary is the mediatrix with her Son and Holy Spirit.

As Catholics, we believe that the Second Person of the Holy Trinity was sent into the world to redeem the human race and restore our friendship with God. But we also believe that the Third Person of the Holy Trinity was sent by Christ on Pentecost Sunday to sanctify the church and world which He had redeemed by His blood.

The primary mission of the Holy Spirit, therefore, is to make us holy, which means to enlighten our minds and enliven our wills with the grace of God.

With out the Holy Spirit the church is just like a club, but with the Holy Spirit she has become a movement that is spreading the life of Christ in the world. This life of Christ will not be possible without the Holy Spirit, hence the reason for them to wait at the upper room under the loving care our blessed mother until the Holy Spirit comes on pentecost.

Christ’s Promise of the Holy Spirit

On the way to His ascension, Christ promised to send the Holy Spirit on His followers. He told the disciples not to leave Jerusalem, but to “wait there for what the Father had promised.” He reminded them: “It is what you have heard me speak about. John baptized with water, but you, not many days from now, will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” Then still more clearly, He predicted what the Holy Spirit would do in their lives. “You will receive power,” Christ assured them, “when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and then you will be my witnesses, not only in Jerusalem, but throughout Judea and Samaria and indeed to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:4-5, 8).

In the original inspired text of the Acts of the Apostles, Jesus promised the disciples that they would be “my martyrs.” If there was ever an age in Christian history when the followers of Christ would need the strength of martyrdom, it is today.

Our Lord could not have been more clear. He told us, “If you wish to be my disciples, take up your daily cross and follow me.” The source of strength to suffer for Christ comes finally from the Holy Spirit with our eyes upon our Mother Mary as our model and spouse of the Holy Spirit. In the language of the New Testament, this power is the same kind of power by which miracles are performed.

Christ’s promise of the Holy Spirit was the assurance that we would witness to Him before the world in which we live. The essence of being a martyr is to be a witness. And we know what a witness does. He gives testimony publicly that something he saw or heard is true. He has experience of a fact or an event, and as a witness he declares that what he says or signs his name to is so. He gives evidence to others that what he testifies to should be believed. Why? Because he personally knows.

We are liable to miss the preceding adjective “my” in the clause, “You shall be my martyrs.” This prefix is crucial. Those who are martyrs are witnesses to Christ. They testify, if need be with their blood, that what they believe is true because they have known Christ. The implication is that in order to be a witness, even to martyrdom, one must have experienced Christ, in a way comparable to what Peter told the early Christians: “You did not see Him, yet you love Him. And still without seeing Him, you are already filled with joy so glorious that it cannot be described, because you believe” (1 Pet. 1:8).

So it was in the apostolic age, and so it is in ours. In order to witness to Christ we must believe in Him so strongly that we are filled with His joy. This joy which comes from the Holy Spirit is not devoid of pain just like in the life of Mary our model and spouse of the Holy Spirit.

But the joy is genuine and unmistakable. It is also profoundly communicable. In fact, one of the paradoxes of martyrdom is the positive happiness that a strongly committed follower of Christ has in suffering for Christ.

This is brought out dramatically by St. Luke, the evangelist of the Holy Spirit, in describing the summons of the apostles before the Sanhedrin. They had been warned not to preach about the Savior. So the apostles were flogged and warned not to speak in the name of Jesus. As they left the jail where they had been scourged, they were “glad to have had the honor of suffering humiliation for the sake of the name” (Acts 5:40-41).

Most Catholics know that at baptism, we receive the twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit. What many do not know is that these fruits are the twelve joys which the Holy Spirit gives us, already here on earth, a foretaste of the joys of heaven. Every time we cooperate with the will of God, He rewards us with a happiness of spirit in the measure that we are faithful to His grace. What an apparent contradiction! The more painful our cooperation with the divine will, the more joy we receive from the Holy Spirit just Mary our model, Mother of the church and spouse of the Holy Spirit.

Thank you my brothers and sisters we have come to the end of today's reflection May the Holy Spirit whom we are about to receive afresh, reactivated in our lives once again the fresh water of our baptism so that we will live our lives in fullness as Christians looking at Mary as our Model and Mother of the church. Through Jesus Christ our Lord Who lives and reigns with the Father and Holy Spirit God forever and ever Amen.

PEACE AND GOODNESS.