41. Hindering the Coming of the Holy Ghost — Second Sermon for the Fourth Sun. lay After Easter

Synopsis — Turning inward, the soul sometimes finds a wintry land: the heart has really grown cold towards God — Warmth is restored by courageous penance and fervent prayer — Sometimes the cold is but an illusion: the soul is being tried by withdrawal of sensible fervor — This is restored by patient waiting upon God — Remarks on the friends and foes of Jesus among the Jews, and in our own day.

And it was the feast of the dedication at Jerusalem, and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the temple, in Solomon's porch. The Jews therefore came round about Him, and said to Him : How long dost Thou hold our souls in suspense? If Thou be the Christ, tell us plainly. Jesus answered them : I speak to you, and you believe not. * * * My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them life everlasting ; and they shall not perish forever, and no man shall pluck them out of My hand. — John x, 22-2S.

All this took place in the temple of Solomon, of which the Psalmist spoke: "His place is in peace." (Ps. lxxv, 2.) The name Solomon means peaceful, and Christ is the eternal Solomon, whose abode can be none else than that of peace, interior peace.

The temple into which the loving Jesus enters is the purified soul, the soul of the man given up to the interior life. Upon that soul God lays more store than on all His other creatures, and is more occupied with it than with all else. In this temple is the feast of dedication, namely, of renewal. And how does this renovation take place, the renewing of that temple in which God so loves to dwell ; yea, rather than in any temple of His that was ever built?

We call anything new whilst it is not long after its beginning; and a man is made new when he turns inward, and enters into the temple of his own soul with all his faculties. There he finds God in all His eternal truth, dwelling and acting there very perceptibly — not as the bodily senses perceive, nor even as the mind reasons, nor yet according to what one may have read or heard. No; but the Divine action in the soul is perceived by the soul's spiritual power of tasting and experiencing the Divine influences, welling up in its depth as out of their own fountain — not introduced from without. A fountain is better than a cistern; the latter is easily muddied and is liable to dry up; but the fountain ever bursts forth fresh and pure, and its water is always its own. Now, in the temple of the soul there is a true feast of dedication — that is to say, of renovation, as often as a man enters his interior soul — even a thousand times a day, if that were possible. And at every dedication there is new purity of intention, new light, new grace and new virtues bestowed. O, this turning inward is a beautiful act; to do it and to do it right, all external devotions and all good works serve to assist, receiving from it in return all their perfection. Indeed, without this interior movement external religious practices are of no great worth. However active one may be in all pious practices, above all other things he should constantly practice this turning inward to his soul's renewal.

"And it was winter." Now, when is it really winter? It is when the heart has grown cold ; when it has within it neither grace, nor God, nor any Godlike things. Snow and frost are those miserable, pitiable created things which hold the soul fast bound in love of them and pleasure in their use. They quench the fire of the Holy Ghost there; they freeze up the fountains of grace with a dreadful spiritual coldness. They destroy all spiritual comfort and sweet familiarity with God.

But there is yet another winter. This is suffered by a really God-fearing man. He is mindful of God and loves Him, and is careful to avoid all sin. But God seems to have forsaken him. As far as his feelings go, he is dry, dark and cold, devoid of all heavenly consolation and spiritual sweetness. Our Lord Himself suffered this spiritual winter, being deserted by His heavenly Father and deprived of His help. Although He was united to the Divine nature, yet His poor human nature received no drop of comfort from the Godhead during His unspeakably bitter passion — not an instant's consolation in His sorest need. He was the most forsaken and helpless and agonizing of all men. Now this is a lesson to His chosen friends. These must with all joy and entire good-will endure this state of abandonment in union with Christ. For He is their shepherd; they are privileged to be His sheep; they must suffer patiently in their interior souls, and show all patience in their outward behavior, in imitation of Jesus Christ. If they are but overjoyed to follow Him into this His winter time of desolation, abandonment by God and all creatures, then will God in actual reality be present with them, and in a manner far more to their advantage than if they experienced the brightest possible summer-time of His sensible favor. No one can fully understand all the good that lies hidden in this stern trial of desolation of spirit, this dark and frozen spiritual winter— supposing always that one holds his mind steady and firm in patient endurance.

The gospel tells us, further, that "the Jews came round about" Jesus. There were among them, as amoug us, some good and some bad. Now, the word Jew may be taken to mean one who confesses God. And when the soul's powers turn into the interior, down to the very roots of life, using natural and supernatural means of perfection, then the soul confesses or truly acknowledges God, and does so in a manner full of feeling and spiritual enjoyment. This is an act of faith so true and living that it wins all that is born of faith. Its power is so great that proclaiming God in all sincerity absorbs the soul's entire life: Interiorly, in the understanding and the will ; outwardly, in every external human faculty; in deeds and words, in doing and refusing to do, and in all sufferings. A man now feels and knows nothing in act or in contemplation except the confessing of God in perfect truth. This may have been Christ's meaning when He said : "Every one, therefore, that shall confess Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father Who is in Heaven." (Matt, x, 32.) Be well assured of this: Whatsoever work thou dost in which thou settest before thee any other end but God, in doing that work thou forgettest God. God by His very nature must be the end and object of all things, and of all thoughts and intentions; and if thou placest any other object before thee, it is as if thou didst deny God, for thou givest to a creature what belongs to God alone and that by prerogative of His very nature.

And there were bad Jews round about our Lord, hearts full of bitterness, men who could not endure to look on Him or suffer Him for a moment. They were stony-hearted against Him. Alas, do we not see the like of this among Christians today? We meet with some men who are enraged against God's friends; who cannot behold their good deeds without the bitterest opposition; who do their utmost to hinder their good works and destroy the good effects of them; who are totally opposed to their ways and their lives, and are ever seeking to misinterpret them — in a word, they act toward good Christians as the bad Jews did toward our Lord. This is a very dangerous state to be in. No sign is as plain of having no part with God and His friends in eternity, as when a man has within him no favor for what is good and pleasing to God in other men's conduct. Therefore did Christ teach: "He that is not with Me is against Me." (Matt, xii, 30.) On the other hand, it is plainly a sign of God's friendship when men are like the good Jews, who were kind to our Saviour. These praise the virtuous lives of fervent Christians in all candor and good will, without false interpretations, full of affection, favor and uprightness of intention — a true sign that God dwells in their inmost souls, and that they shall finally possess eternal joy. The others are altogether different. Of them did He speak on that same occasion, saying : ''Ye are not of My sheep, for My sheep hear My voice."

Now let us ask why our Lord so often calls His friends sheep. Because sheep have two qualities that our Lord especially loves, namely, innocence and gentle meekness. We read in the Apocalypse that the pure and guileless "follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth." (Apoc. xiv, 4.) The meek and humble of heart are near to God, and they hear His voice ; proud and haughty men never hear it. When the wind howls and the doors and windows clatter, one can hardly hear the voice of man. As to the voice of God, that fatherly, whispered, secret word, uttered in the inmost depths of thy soul — if thou wilt hear it, thou must be deaf to all the roar of the world without, and hush all the voices of thy own inner life. Thou must yield thyself up like a meek and gentle little sheep, confess thy sins, and, all humbly hushed and quieted, hearken to this voice of God; it is denied to all who are not thus made like unto slice jx It was to His sheep that the Lord spoke, as we read in the lessons of this night's office: "I will give thee a lovely land, the goodly inheritance of the army of the Gentiles. And I said : Thou shalt call Me Father and shalt not cease to walk after Me." (Jer. iii, 19.) And what is this lovely land which He has promised His chosen sheep, His beloved friends? That land is their own body. Our bodies are by nature full of concupiscence and rebellious, but He enables His friends to reduce them to obedience, and they find much joy in compelling them to do their will. What was once waste and barren is now become a fertile and well-tilled land, in which one sows and reaps in all abundance.

;ui what is the goodly inheritance? O, it is nothing less than our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, for He is the heir of His Father and we are co-heirs with Him, as St. Paul tells us : "Heirs, indeed, of God, and joint heirs with Christ." (Bom. viii, 17.) The Son has received from the

Father all that He is and all that He can do; and into His hand hatb the Father given all things. And, in turn, the Son hath given back to His Father all that He received from Him, even to the very least, seeking the Father's glory alone in all things. And in this we are to imitate God's Son. For if He is to be made our inheritance, we must restore to His Father everything without exception that we are and that we have power to do, holding back not a hair's weight of all that is ours in our interior or our exterior existence. No matter how it has come to us, direct or indirect, everything must go to Him Who is its owner: do thou make no exception whatever. And then seek God Himself. Our miserable nature is greedy and selfish, seeking its own in everything, and hereby our lovely inheritance is obscured; for to appropriate to self what is God's alone, is to debase the Godlike to the state of the creature, and is to obscure the glory of our heavenly inheritance.

And what does He mean by the words : I will give thee the exercise of the heathen? This means that the soul shall receive God's grace with the humility of a converted pagan. Those converts received grace as grace, having no pious practices to help them, nor any holiness to begin with, and starting without any merits; whereas the Jews were more fortunate in having their law and their ceremonies and their good works, and many other helps. The heathen had nothing whatever to build on but God's grace and mercy alone. Now in that spirit should thy devout practices be offered up, trusting to God's great mercy and kindness and nothing else.

Thou must not place too much confidence in thy own good preparations, or take much account of thy worthiness. Many men follow the Jews in this respect, building on their own methods, and trusting (however secretly and unconsciously it may be) to their own works. And if it happens that they miss doing certain pious things, they think that all is lost, and forthwith they lose trust in God and man. By saying this I do not mean that one should give up his devout practices; no, let him do them well and punctually, but without making I hem-rather than God's blessed grace— the foundation of his hopes. Such men depend wholly for their union with God upon the boast that they have worn haircloth and chains, fasted and prayed and watched, been poor men for forty years; and apart from these things they would have no solid trust in God. But if a man has done all the good works in the world, then it but gives him the occasion to be detached from them in his soul, and to stand before God as if he had never done a single good deed his whole life long, whether great or small, accepting God's grace for its own sake alone and as a gift of His loving mercy, rejecting every thought of trusting in his own personal preparation for it. This is what we may call the exercise of the heathen. May God help us to what He has promised in the prophecy of Jeremias : "I will give thee a lovely land, the goodly inheritance of the army of the Gentiles. And I said : Thou shalt call Me Father, and shalt not cease to walk after Me." Amen.