Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year C
First reading: Acts 15:1-2, 22-29
Second reading: Rv 21:10-14, 22-23
Gospel reading: Jn 14:23-29
For the second consecutive week, the Sunday readings remind us that the Catholic Church is guided by God the Holy Spirit.
The Church is not merely human, as many people think. She is also divine: established by God the Son, mandated by his Father, and maintained and guarded by the Holy Spirit. She is not just an assembly of believers gathered around the Pope; she is a body whose head is Christ and whose soul is the Holy Spirit.
Our own soul animates all parts of our body so that they function together, even though they are all different. Similarly, the Holy Spirit animates all the parts of Christ’s mystical body, joining them together with their head, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. He is “the source” of the body’s life, “of its unity in diversity, and of the riches of its gifts.”
“The Spirit dwells in the Church and in the hearts of the faithful as in a temple,” Pope St. John Paul II said in his encyclical on the Holy Spirit, Dominum et Vivificantem (“Lord and Giver of Life”).
“The Spirit guides the Church into the fullness of truth and gives her a unity of fellowship and service,” he said. “He furnishes and directs her with various gifts, both hierarchical and charismatic.”
These gifts include the sacraments, God’s word, the virtues of the body’s members, special favours (“charisms”), and the authority of the apostles –“which holds first place” among his gifts, the Catechism says.
“The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you,” Jesus told the apostles in the Gospel reading.
Accordingly, the bishops, the apostles’ successors, do not govern the Church as our political leaders govern us, making new laws and abolishing old laws as they see fit. They cannot change the word of God, add to it, or subtract from it. At Christ’s command, guided by the Holy Spirit, they listen to it, guard it with dedication, and expound it faithfully.
The first reading shows how the apostles understood this. “It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us,” they wrote to the Christians at Antioch. They had not waited for miraculous revelation; they had considered the question themselves, in light of their belief in the Holy Spirit’s guidance and with a readiness to submit their wills to his.
The second reading supports this concept of the Church as both divine and human. There the “holy city Jerusalem” (an image of the Church) “coming down out of Heaven from God,” is built on the twelve apostles.
In fact, the Pope said, “as the Church becomes ever more aware of this mystery, she sees herself more clearly” as “a sacrament” – a “visible sign” of a “hidden reality,” as the Catechism says. By giving his apostles his Spirit, Jesus gave them his power to sanctify humanity, thus making them “sacramental signs” of himself – visible, efficacious signs.
Accordingly, the Church is “the universal sacrament of salvation,” for she is the “sign and instrument” of unity among humans and communion with God.
As a sacrament, she is a visible or perceptible sign of supernatural realities. Her members are united by visible bonds, not just “internal, hidden bonds.”
The Holy Spirit unites us not just to our invisible head, Christ, by “spiritual and invisible bonds,” but also to our visible head, the Pope, by “corresponding external, visible bonds, so that this spiritual and supernatural society might appear in external form,” said the First Vatican Council.
Accordingly, the Church has “a visible teaching authority,” a “visible priestly office,” and “a visible governing body.”
“Finally, the whole body of the Church is visible,” comprising “not only the just or the predestined” – “invisible” Christians, known to God alone – but all those “who are linked” with the Church by baptism – “visible” Christians, known to everybody.
Father Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English. The whole course is available in written form and Sessions 1–33 in YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Session 34, “Consecrated Life,” will be available in YouTube form starting May 22.