In the name of the Father, the
Son and the Holy Ghost.
The Church of God is not an
institution, it is a miracle and it is a mystery. It is a
miracle because how could we expect that closeness of God which
is revealed to us in the Church. And it is also a mystery in the
original sense of the world, something which cannot be either
explained or conveyed in words, something that can be known only
through a spellbound communion with God. The English word “God”
comes from a Germanic root that means “him, before whom one
prostrates in adoration”. This is where our knowledge of God
begins – the sense of the divine presence that forces us down to
our knees, spellbound, silent, not with an empty silence that is
ours at times but with a silence which is nothing but intent
worshipful listening, listening to the presence, listening to
that presence which is at the core of the silence. And he who
speak to us within this silence is the Holy Spirit, who unveils
before our minds and hearts what the words spoken by God,
revealed to us in the Gospel truly convey. It is only under the
guidance of the Holy Spirit that we can both believe and
understand what Christ spoke because words in themselves are
always equivocal, they may be clear or obscure, they may be made
to mean what they never meant. And this is the role of the Holy
Spirit - to make us understand God’s word as it was born in the
divine silence and unfolded before us in words which we could
understand. But these words are not a prison, they are an open
door as Christ is the door leading to the Father and leading to
eternal life. It is the Holy Spirit who according to the promise
of our Lord unveils for us the meaning of the Scriptures, it is
not scholarship, it is worship and a worship that allows us to
commune with the mind of God and the heart of God. The Spirit of
truth, but also Him whom the Scripture calls the Paraclete, a
complex word as so many of the words of ancient languages. It
means “the Comforter”, Him who gives consolation. It means
‘Comforter’ in the sense that He gives us strength, it means
also “Him, who brings joy”. And these three meanings are
important but He can be to us the Comforter in these various
ways only if we are in need of His comfort.
What kind of consolation do we
need? Most of us feel perfectly comfortable in our lives and
indeed in our worship and our spiritual life, and who of us is
in a position to say with all the intensity and depth with which
St. Paul spoke these words, “For me life is Christ, death would
be a gain because as long as I live in the body, I am separated
from Christ”? Can we honestly say that for us life is Christ,
that all that He stands for is life-giving, all that is contrary
to Him, to us is death? Can we say that we have died with Christ
to everything which is alien to God? Can we say that we are
alive only when the things of God come our way - prayer, deep
meditation, the kind of understanding which the Spirit of God
reveals to us? And so we must ask ourselves very sternly a first
question: is Christ my life or not? Would it be enough for me to
feel that life is fulfilled, complete to be at one with Christ
in all things or do I feel that there are so many things which I
love and which I am not prepared to let go off even to be with
Christ?
And again, Christ is in the
midst of us invisibly, mysteriously. Yes, but He is not with us
in the way in which He was with the Apostles. We cannot say with
St. John that we speak of what we have seen, what we have heard,
what our hands have touched. We know Christ in the spirit, no
longer in the flesh, and yet Christ rose in the flesh, Christ
ascended and is seated at the right hand of the Father in His
body glorified. Paul longed to be with Him in this companionship
full of veneration, of reverence, of love. He wanted to be at
one with Him without anything separating from Him. “Who shall
make me free of this body of corruption?” - of this body against
which my thoughts and my prayers and my best inclinations, and
my most passionate impulses for good break down? Can we say
that? Is death what we expect longingly because it will unite us
to Christ? Or are we still pagan at heart and do we wish to flee
from death? And instead of saying, “Lord, Jesus, come and come
soon!” aren’t we prepared to say, “Tarry, o Lord, tarry, give me
time,” in the way in which Augustine prayed to the Lord after
his conversion, “Lord, give me chastity but not just now.” Isn’t
it that our condition - not concerning chastity alone but
everything in life: not just now, o Lord, the time will come
when all my energies will be spent, when age will have come and
made life much less attractive or unpalatable - then take me.
No, this is not it. And so when we think of the Holy Spirit as
our Comforter, as one who consoles us from the absence of Christ
by making us to commune with the essence of things, where do we
stand? Is He our Comforter while we need no comfort?
And again, in our ministry how
often do we feel that we are totally, ultimately helpless, that
what we are called to do is simply beyond human possibilities?
In the beginning of the Eucharistic celebration in the Orthodox
Church, when the priest is vested, when he has prepared the Holy
Gifts, when he is about to give the first liturgical
exclamation, when in his naivety he may think, “Now I will
perform miracles on earth,” the deacon turns to him and says,
“And now, father, it is for God to act.” All you could do, you
have done, you have prayed and prepared yourself, made yourself
open to God, you have vested yourself and become an image – but
only an image, not the thing. You have prepared the bread and
the wine and now what is expected of you is something which you
cannot do, you cannot by any power including apostolic
succession make this bread into the Body of Christ, this wine
into the Blood of Christ, you have no power over God and you
have no power over the created world. It is only Christ who is
the only celebrant because He is the High Priest of all creation
who sending the Holy Spirit can break through into time, open it
up so that eternity can flow, indeed, make eruption into it and
within this eschatological situation in which eternity fills
time make possible the impossible, make bread into the Body of
Christ crucified and risen, the wine into the Blood of Christ
crucified and risen.
And all our function depends
only on the Holy Spirit. Strength? St. Paul hoped for strength,
he prayed for it and the Lord answered him, “My grace suffices
unto thee, My strength is made manifest in weakness.” And Paul
rejoices in his weakness, so, he says, that all should be the
power of God. Not the weakness of our slackness, of our
laziness, of our timidity, of our cowardice, of our
forgetfulness, no, not that weakness but the frailty recognised,
which is given to God, the surrender of ourselves.
If I may use an image, it is
that of the sail of a sailing ship. Of all the parts of the ship
the sail is the frailest, the weakest and yet filled with the
wind, and the word “wind” in ancient languages is the same as
“spirit” “ruah”, “pnevma” it can carry the heavy structure of
the ship to its haven. This is the kind of weakness, of frailty
which we have got to offer to God, such frailty that He can use
it freely, without resistance, and then our strength will be
stronger than anything which the created world can possess. The
martyrs were frail, as frail as we were, but they abandoned
themselves to God and they lived and died in the power of the
Spirit. We need that strength.
And then the Paraclete is the
one that gives joy, the joy of entering already now into
eternity, the joy of being joined to Christ in the communion of
the one body, the joy of giving our lives for Him and if
necessary – our death, a joy which the world cannot give but
which the world cannot take away.
I will end on one example of
this joy of the Spirit. I met a few years ago in Russia an
elderly priest who had spent 36 years in prisons and
concentration camps. He sat opposite me with eyes shining with
joy and gratitude and he said, “Do you realise, can you imagine,
how infinitely good God had been to me? The Soviet authorities
did not allow a priest either into prisons or into camps; and He
chooses me, a young, inexperienced priest and sends me first to
prison and then to camp to look after His lost sheep.” There was
nothing in him but gratitude and joy. And that joy, that kind of
gratitude against the history of his life was truly an
outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Let us therefore in all our
life, whether we pray, listen to the unutterable groanings of
the Spirit within us, teaching us ultimately to call the God of
Heaven our Father if we are in Jesus Christ, in the words of
Irenaeus of Lyon, sons of God in the Only-Begotten Son of God.
Let us open ourselves and listen intently when we have got to
preach, so that it should not be a work of our intellect or
learning but a sharing of something which we have learnt from
God. However poor, childlike, simple it may seem, let it be
God’s. And when we come to the celebration of the Holy
Mysteries, let us remember that we stand where no-one can stand
but the High Priest of all creation, the Lord Jesus Christ and
let us turn to the Holy Spirit calling Him to make the bread and
the wine into the Body and Blood of Christ in an act Divine
which we can only mediate by faith and in obedience to Christ’s
own command. Amen
.
