May 25 Sun
What will the Holy Spirit do for me?
The Magisterium of the Church is the teaching authority of the pope and bishops.
If asked what must be believed or what must be done to be saved, people on their own will come up with a thousand different answers. Some will be flat wrong. Some will impose unnecessary burdens. Some will only make sense at one time in history. Some will zero in on one true aspect of the faith to the exclusion of the others. This is why there have been thousands of denominations of our separated brethren.
The Church did not want to impose any unnecessary burdens on Gentile converts.
All of us, the laity living in the secular world, do not want to separate ourselves from the people around us, but embrace whatever is normal, only rejecting what offends faith or morals.
Through the Holy Spirit, and in Jesus Christ, God strengthens us with His grace. God also has revealed mysteries we could never have discovered on our own.
The greatest mystery is that within the only one God is a trinity of Persons: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
If we love the Son and keep his word, the Son and the Father will love us and make their dwelling with us and send us the Holy Spirit as our advocate and teacher.
Peace and joy are the consequences of this indwelling of the Blessed Trinity in us.
As the weeks of Easter roll on, the Church begins to draw our attention to Christ’s Ascension and then to the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Church at Pentecost.
In our Gospel reading today, Our Lord tells the Apostles that “the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.”
At work since creation, having previously ‘spoken through the prophets,’ the Spirit will now be with and in the disciples, to teach them and guide them into all the truth.
Jesus calls the Holy Spirit the Paraclete (meaning, “he who is called to one’s side” or “ad-vocatus.”) The Holy Spirit is at our side, speaking to us and on our behalf, as “consoler” and “spirit of truth.”
The work of the Holy Spirit in our interior lives is to transform us into “other christs.” Part of it is to prove we are wrong about sin. We are wrong when we think that sin is our salvation, and that sin will make us happier.
In reality, salvation is from Jesus, whom the Father sent. And the Consoler gives the human heart grace for repentance and conversion.
When the Holy Spirit proves us wrong about sin, we receive a double gift: the gift of the truth of conscience, and the gift of the certainty of redemption.
The truth of conscience is that we see that our sins are wrong.
The certainty of redemption is that through Christ, we have God’s forgiveness. This is true consolation.
We are foolish (and unnecessarily so) if we feel we have to hide our sins from ourselves, if we dread admitting them to God, and if we do not want to accuse ourselves of them in the confessional.
The Holy Spirit will help our reason and our memory so we can properly make this judgment of conscience.
At the same time, the Holy Spirit reminds us that Christ came to redeem sinners.
This is why we should resolve to examine our consciences daily and to confess our sins in the Sacrament of Reconciliation regularly.