Breathing, loving and doing: The Holy Spirit

The Readings for the Sixth Sunday of Easter

The Gospel of John begins as does the Book of Genesis, “In the beginning…” The Gospel witnesses to how God is remaking his creation. John the Baptist on the first day of the Gospel of John calls God’s people to repent. Out of his group of disciples, John sends two, Andrew the brother of Simon Peter, and another disciple to follow Jesus, who John the Baptist calls the “Lamb of God.” The Gospel says,

“Jesus turned and saw them following him and said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?”  He said to them, “Come, and you will see.” Jn. 1:38-39

 Today’s Gospel is part of Jesus invitation to come and see.  The Holy Spirit inspired John to testify to the Lamb of God and today Jesus promises this same indwelling spirit to us as his disciples. Men will do for persons what they will never do for principles. An impersonal principle may make us think, but a philosophy, whatever its merits, too often leaves the heart tepid, especially in crisis. We need to be inspired because we are made for love. “Inspired” means to be ‘breathed into.” Religious and moral principles give us stability, but we need love’s inspiration to breathe life into principles. A crisis in life can destroy principles, but love and trust can bolster us through any crisis. The Church holds up in her one hand charity and the Sacraments and in her other hand, faith and the Creed. The virtuous Christian is characterized alike by clear knowledge of and steady adherence to the principles of faith and reason, and by steady loyalty to the person of Jesus Christ.

Gospel: The moral law and love
First, Jesus made love the underlying rationale of the moral law. He said,
“if you love me, you will keep my commandments.”   Love of God is the first commandment and keeping the commandments is an expression of love for Christ and love for God.  Second, Jesus promised to send them the advocate, a counselor. The Holy Spirit is that gift. Spirit, as in ‘inspire’, is our word for pneuma (Greek) ruah (Hebrew)  which mean breath or wind.  Jesus said, “the spirit will be with you and he will be in you.”
 
Jesus did not abandon us at his Ascension. He said, “I won't leave you desolate.” The Greek word used in the Gospel is orphanos as in, ‘orphan .’ He didn’t leave us fatherless like orphans. We are escorted by the Spirit. It will take place after Jesus departs, where he says “the world is not going to see me anymore, you'll see me; because I live.” In John's Gospel, after his resurrection, Jesus breathes on the Apostles and gives them the power of the Holy Spirit to forgive and retain sins. Jn. 20:22. They will grasp the mystery of the Trinity, because one of the persons of the Trinity will now dwell in them and they will understand that Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in him. Through the Spirit Jesus is also in us and we are in him. The Spirit binds the Church together. This is where the Nicene Creed we recite at mass originates in these passages. We recite:

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.

 The gift of the Spirit is present through the sacrament of Confirmation

Acts of the Apostles: Samaritans, Baptism and Confirmation
Deacon Philip carried the Gospel to Samaria, the place in the Gospel of John where Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well. The Samaritans are a mix of Israelite and Gentile blood, although they claim to be people of the book. The Jewish people of Jesus’ time saw them as cut off, like apostates.  Philip evangelized them and through the power of his preaching, brought them to faith. As a Deacon, he had the authority to baptized, we all do, but when it comes to this rite of laying hands to bestow the gift of the Holy Spirit, he needed to call the Apostles, in this case, Peter and John. Here is the origin of the Sacrament of Confirmation which in the Eastern Church is known as Chrismation because the laying on of hands is accompanied by an anointing with oil. Chrism is the Greek word for oil. Confirmation is a special grace of Holy Spirit that can only be conferred by the Apostles and their successors, the Bishops. ( Bishops can delegate to parish priest as needed) The sacrament is still tied to the ritual of the laying on of hands. The Bishop use to slap us on the cheek in order to wake us up to God’s presence. In the Western Church, the sacrament of Confirmation was detached from Baptism because the Western Church sought to retain the symbolism and the significance of a successor to the Apostles being the one who anoints and lays hands on the person receiving Confirmation. Love, the commandments and the Holy Spirit are at the heart of Christian discipleship and way of life.

Love and the Commandments
Recall that the Book of Genesis says that Adam and Eve fell because they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Gn. 2:17.  The healing needed in the human heart is experienced in the war that wages in our heart over our choices between good and evil.  Every human being, by nature, has the capacity and predisposition towards virtue, but can fall into vice. This innate desire for virtue can be converted into habits of virtue. These habitual virtues are called "acquired virtues." 
 
Acquired virtues: The moral virtues
Generally, when people say that they can be good without God, they are referring to the acquired virtues.  Acquired virtues can grow strong through practice or weak through abusive lifestyles. We can acquire the virtue of sobriety by self-discipline or abuse the virtue through gluttonous behavior. We can acquire chastity through disciplines of mind and behavior, or we can abuse the virtue by behavior that instills in us the vice of lust.  Sadly, no amount of virtue acquired by effort alone, will every give us the abundant life promised by Christ. Human virtue alone, on this side of the grave and beyond will always be defective, as will the happiness it is capable of delivering. That was St. Augustine’s critique of the Greco Roman pagan philosophical tradition. Being good and gritting your teeth, as do the
Stoics cannot deliver the happiness our hearts desire. We need help, we need God’s grace. Thus, the necessity for salvation of the theological virtues.
 
Infused virtue: The theological virtues
Heaven is a relationship with the Father who made us, the Son who gave his life for us through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In short, it is to live in love like a fish lives in the ocean. The infused virtues are the gift of grace at baptism. They are faith, hope and charity. No infused virtues, no heaven.
 
The love of God is rooted in a faithful trust of God. Without trust in our Creator and his will for us, there can be no heaven. Adam and Eve did not trust God. You must know God in order to love God, for you cannot love one who you do not know. But you must love God in order to know him, because love proceeds from trust; thus, the need for the infused virtue of faith. The sacraments, scriptures and prayer are the ordinary means to the experience and grow in faith.
 
Hope in God, directs our capacity for virtue and love to its proper end. Hope in God breathes life into our virtues because it roots our virtue in heaven, not in virtues reward in this life, if any. The moral life reduced to nothing but duty is deadly. Love breathes life into our capacity for virtue and roots our moral behavior in the love of God. Hope is about a future we have not experienced. Hope is the loving energy that inspires the Christian life.
 
Charity, it to learn to love like God. The Father sent his Son for us, while we were still sinners. We, therefore, are called to love those who do not love us. Love is to seek the good of another as the other. Love calls us to be charitable to the other in the measure we would seek charity for ourselves. We can never pay God back for the gift of existence and make things equal. Through charity, God calls us to be his image of love towards others, which love is rooted in our faith and hope.
 
These three infused virtues are given in Baptism. God binds himself to this sacrament, but is not limited by the sacraments. Our proper concern as Christians to love as disciples of Christ. The infused virtues, faith, hope and love, need exercise, or they will wither and die. St. John Paul II referred to the “baptized unbeliever” to describe those who, given the gift of eternal life at baptism, ignored the one who loved them from the beginning in life. So, we aid the growth of grace through prayer, the sacraments, the scriptures, the habits of virtue all bound together in a life inspired by charity.
 
Children who are baptized, or fertile ground for belief, but must learn the basic truths of the faith. Adults, ought to care for their understanding of the faith, so that virtue’s growth might be aided by their love of learning. By love and by understanding we come to the experience of the Triune God. To be strong in the infused virtues, but weak in the acquired virtues, is to live a faith without the reality that works of charity offer our hearts. The infused virtues of faith hope and love elevate the acquired virtues to their true end, the love of God.
 
Christ our teacher taught that those who dreads anger with their brother, will stop short of hatred and murder.  (Matt. v, 21-26). One who strives to control lustful thought, will not commit adultery. (Matt. v, 27-30). One who avoids unnecessary oaths, will not swear a false oath. (Matt. v, 33-37). He who loves his enemy will be a better friend. (Matt. v, 43-47). To aim at loving perfection, will make you a better citizen. (Matt. v, 48). If you aim for the stars, you might hit the streetlamp. If you aim for the streetlamp, it is a shorter fall to the gutter.

The Great Divorce: C.S. Lewis
The reward of virtue, infused and acquired, is union with God. The choice we have is not so much between heaven and fell, but between abundant life in Christ, or an impoverished grey existence. C.S. Lewis wrote a great little book entitled, The Great Divorce.  In that book he describes life in hell and the desire for heaven. We never get to see heaven in Lewis’s description. Most of the book describes souls arguing with God over whether they are good enough as they are to enter the kingdom. Lewis does describe hell; no fires, no demons. Hell is this twilight place stretching out into a vast dark plain. The people who can’t get along with the person living in the apartment next to them, move out to the edge of town. As the conflicts increase, they move further and further out into the dark. In the far distant blackness of hell, the lights of homes glowing dimly are farther and farther apart.
 
The virtues, infused and acquired, are God’s call to leave ourselves behind as we experience them in the here and now to embrace the love of God and neighbor. The gift of the Holy Spirit promised to the disciples today is the gift answering Jesus’ invitation to “Come and see.” You might love what you see and never want to leave. That is the eternal joy of heaven.