“The
Father will give you another
Counselor”
–
John 14:16
The Holy
Spirit Reveals the Merciful Father.
.
by
Raniero Cantalamessa
1. A Year of the Lord's Mercy
Returning to his home in
Nazareth after his baptism in the Jordan,
Jesus solemnly applies the words of Isaiah
to himself:
“The Spirit of the Lord
is upon me,
because he has
anointed me to preach good news to the
poor.
He has sent me to
proclaim release to the captives
and recovering of
sight to the blind,
to set at liberty
those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the acceptable year of the
Lord.” (Luke 4:18-19)
It was thanks to the anointing of
the Holy Spirit that Jesus preached the good
news, healed the sick, comforted the afflicted,
and performed all his works of mercy. St. Basil
writes that the Holy Spirit was “inseparably
present” with Jesus so that his “every operation
was wrought with the co-operation of the
Spirit.”78 The Holy Spirit, who is
love personified in the Trinity, is also the
mercy of God personified. He is the very
“content” of divine mercy. Without the Holy
Spirit, “mercy” would be an empty word.
The name “Paraclete” clearly
indicates this. In announcing his coming,
Jesus says, “And I will pray the Father, and
he will give you another Counselor, to be with
you for ever” (John 14:16). “Another” here
implies “after having given me, Jesus, to
you.” The Holy Spirit is, therefore, the one
through whom the risen Jesus now continues his
work of “doing good and healing all” (Acts
10:38). The statement that the Paraclete “will
take what is mine and declare it to you” (John
16:14) also applies to mercy: the Holy Spirit
will open the treasures of Jesus’ mercy to
believers in every age. He will make Jesus’
mercy not just be remembered but also experienced.
The
Paraclete is active above all in the
sacrament of mercy, Confession. “He is the
remission of all sins,” says one of the
Church’s prayers.79 Because of
that, before giving absolution to a
penitent, a confessor says, “God, the
Father of mercies, through the death and
resurrection of his Son, has reconciled
the world to himself and sent the Holy
Spirit among us for the forgiveness of
sins; through the ministry of the Church
may God give you pardon and peace.”
Some
Church Fathers considered the oil the
Samaritan poured on the wounds of the man
who was robbed to be a symbol of the Holy
Spirit.80 A beautiful
African-American spiritual expresses this
thought with the evocative image of the
balm in Gilead: “There is a balm in
Gilead, / to heal the sin-sick soul
/. . . . / to make the
wounded whole.” Gilead is a place
mentioned in the Old Testament that was
famous for its perfumed healing ointment
(see Jeremiah 8:22). Listening to this
song we could almost imagine a street
vendor shouting out a list of his
merchandise and their prices. The whole
Church should be this “street vendor.” The balm the Church
offers today is no longer the medicinal
ointment of Gilead; it is the Holy
Spirit.
2. The Letter and the
Spirit, Justice and Mercy
The
Holy Spirit is the key to solving the very
tricky problem of the relationship between
the law and mercy. Commenting on Paul’s
saying that the letter kills but the Spirit
gives life (2 Corinthians 3:3-6), St. Thomas
Aquinas writes, “The ‘letter’ refers to
every written law that exists outside of
man, including the moral precepts of the
gospel. The ‘letter’ of the gospel, even of
its precepts, also kills without the inward
presence of the grace of faith that heals
us.”81 Shortly before that
statement, the holy doctor explains what he
means by “the grace of faith”: “The new law is primarily the
same grace of the Holy Spirit that is given
to believers.”82
This is
a bold assertion that none of us would dare
make if it did not come from two very great
doctors of the Latin Church, Augustine and
Thomas Aquinas. It finds confirmation
earlier in the very words of Christ and the
experience of the apostles. If a
proclamation of the beatitudes and the moral
teachings of the gospel were enough for us
to have eternal life, then there would have
been no need for Jesus to die and be raised
for us to receive the gift of the Spirit.
That is why he tells the apostles it is good
for him to go away so that he can send the
Paraclete upon them (see John 16:7). Look at
the experience of the apostles: they had
listened to all the precepts of the very
author of the gospel, but they were not able
to put them into practice until the Holy
Spirit came down upon them at Pentecost.
The conclusion that
emerges from all this is clear: if even the
gospel precepts without the Holy Spirit
would be “the letter that kills,” what can
we say about ecclesiastical laws, monastic
rules, and the canons in the canon law,
including those that regulate marriage? The
Spirit does not abolish or bypass the law;83
he does,
however, teach at what point the law should
move aside and yield to mercy. Obviously,
not every “letter” kills but only the one
that claims, all by itself and once and for
all, to regulate life or even substitute
itself for life.
3.
The Holy Spirit Reveals the Merciful
Father
An
essential work of the Holy Spirit with
respect to mercy is also that of changing
the picture people have in their minds of
God after they sin. One of the
causes—perhaps the main one—for the
alienation of people today from religion and
faith is the distorted image they have of
God. It is also the cause of a lifeless
Christianity that has no enthusiasm or joy
and is lived out more as a duty than as a
gift, by constraint rather than by
attraction.
What is this
“preconceived” idea of God in the collective
human unconscious that operates
automatically (in computer language, we
would say “by default”)? To find that out,
we only need to ask this question: “What
ideas, what words, what feelings
spontaneously arise for you before you think
about it when you come to the words in the
Lord’s Prayer ‘May your will be done’”? In
general, people say it with their heads bent
down in resignation inwardly, as if
preparing themselves for the worst.
People
unconsciously link God’s will to everything
that is unpleasant and painful, to what in
one way or another is seen as destroying
individual freedom and development. It is as
though God were the enemy of every
celebration, joy, and pleasure. People do
not take into account that in the New
Testament, the will of God is called “eudokia”
(see Ephesians 1:9; Luke 2:14), meaning,
“goodwill, kindness.” When we pray, “May
your will be done,” it is really like
saying, “Fulfill in me, Father, your plan of
love.” Mary said her fiat with that
attitude, and so did Jesus.
God is
generally seen as the Supreme Being, the
Omnipotent One, the Lord of time and
history, as an entity who asserts his power
over an individual from the outside. No
detail of human life escapes him. The
transgression of the law, disobedience to
the divine will, inexorably introduces a
disorder into the order willed by God from
all eternity. As a consequence, his infinite
justice requires reparation: a person will
need to do something for God so as to
reestablish the order that was disturbed in
creation, and this reparation will involve a
deprivation, a sacrifice. However, since
people are never able to be certain that the
“satisfaction” is enough, anxiety arises
over facing death and judgment. God is a
taskmaster who requires being paid back in
full!
Of
course, these people do not leave out the
mercy of God! But for them, mercy functions
only to moderate the necessary rigors of
justice. It rectifies the situation, but it
is an exception, not the rule. In practice,
then, they believe God’s love and
forgiveness depend on the love and
forgiveness they have for others: if you
forgive whoever offended you, God will be
able in turn to forgive you. It leads
to a relationship of
bargaining with God. Isn’t it true that
people think they need to accumulate merits
to get into heaven? And don’t people
attribute great significance to their
efforts—to the Masses they attend, to the
candles they light, and to the novenas they
make?
Since all these practices
have allowed so many people in the past to
demonstrate their love to God, they cannot
be thrown out the window but need to be
respected. God makes his flowers bloom in
all climates and his saints in all seasons.
We cannot deny, however, that again there is
a risk here of falling into a utilitarian
religion of “do ut des,” “I give so
that you can give, so that I can receive.”
Behind all of this is the presupposition
that a relationship with God depends on
human beings. People unconsciously presume
to “pay God his price” (see Psalm 49:7);
they do not want to be debtors but creditors
to God.
Where
does this twisted idea of God come from? Let
us leave aside individual and incidental
factors like a bad relationship with one’s
earthly father, which, in some cases, puts a
strain on the relationship with God the
Father. The basic reason for this terrible
“preconception” about God clearly appears
from what we have just said: the law, the
commandments. As long as people live under
the reign of sin, under the law, God seems
to be a severe Master, someone who is
opposed to the fulfillment of a person’s
earthly desires with his mandates of “You
should . . . You should
not” that comprise the commandments: “You
should not covet other’s goods, others’
spouses,” and so on. In this situation,
carnal human beings store up bitterness
against God deep in their hearts. They see
him as an adversary to their happiness, and
if it depended on them, they would be very
happy if God did not exist.84
The
first thing the Holy Spirit does when he
comes to dwell in us is to reveal a
different face of God to us. He shows him to
us as an ally, as a friend, as the one who
“did not spare his own Son but gave him up
for us all” (Romans 8:32). In brief, the
Holy Spirit shows us a very tender Father
who has given us the law not to stifle our
freedom but to protect it. A filial
sentiment then arises that makes us
spontaneously cry, “Abba, Father.” It
is like saying, “I did not know you, or I
knew you
only from hearing about you. Now I know you,
I know who you are, and I know that you
truly wish good for me and that you look
upon me with favor!” A son or daughter has
now replaced a servant; love has replaced
fear. This is what happens on the subjective
and existential level when a person is “born
anew of the Spirit” (see John 3:5, 7-8).
In
addition to the law, there has been another
reason in recent times for resentment
against God: human suffering, and especially
the suffering of the innocent. A nonbeliever
has written that human suffering “is the
rock of atheism.”85 The dilemma
is that either God can overcome evil but
does not want to, so he is not a father; or
that he wants to overcome evil but he
cannot, so he is not omnipotent. This is a
very old objection, but it has become
deafening in the wake of the tragedies of
World War II. “No one can believe in a God
as Father after Auschwitz,” someone has
written.
I
attempted to explain in the first chapter
the answer the Holy Spirit has given the
Church about this problem, which is that God
suffers alongside people. He is not
a far-off God who looks with indifference
at a person suffering on earth. To the
objection above, one can thus respond that
God can overcome evil but does not choose
to do it (at least in a general or normal
way) so as not to remove people’s free
will. God wants to overcome evil—and he
will—but with a new kind of victory, the
victory of love in which he takes evil
upon himself and converts it to good for
all eternity. It would be a magnificent
fruit of the Year of Mercy if it served to
restore the true picture of God that Jesus
came to earth to reveal to us.
4. Making Ourselves
Paracletes
The title “Paraclete”
not only speaks about God’s mercy toward
us but also opens for us a whole new field
of acts of mercy for one another. We need,
in other words, to become paracletes
ourselves! If it is true that the
Christian needs to be an alter
Christus, “another Christ,” it is just as
true that he or she needs to become “another
paraclete.”
The love of God has been
poured into our hearts through the Holy
Spirit (see Romans 5:5), whether it be the
love with which God loves us or the love
that has made us in turn capable of loving
God and our neighbor. When applied to
mercy—which is the form love takes in the
face of the suffering and sin of a person
who is loved—the following saying from the
apostle tells us something very important:
the Paraclete not only comforts us; he also
comes to comfort others and makes us able to
comfort them and be merciful. St. Paul
writes, “Blessed be the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies
and God of all comfort, who comforts
us in all our affliction, so that we may be
able to comfort those who are in any
affliction, with the comfort with
which we ourselves are comforted by
God [italics added]” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).
The Greek word from which “Paraclete” is
derived appears five times in this text,
sometimes as a verb and sometimes as a noun.
It contains the essential elements for a
theology of consolation.
Consolation comes from God who is “the
Father of all comfort”; he comes to whoever
is afflicted. But he does not stop with that
person; his ultimate goal is reached when
those who have experienced consolation use
that experience in turn to comfort others.
But
console how? This is the important point.
With the very consolation with which we have
been consoled by God—a divine, not human,
consolation. That does not happen when we
are content to repeat empty words about
circumstances that leave things the way we
found them: “Don’t worry; don’t get upset;
you’ll see that everything will turn out for
the best!” We need instead to communicate
authentic consolation, which comes from “the
encouragement of the scriptures [so that] we
might have hope” (Romans 15:4). This also
explains the miracles that a simple word or
gesture in an atmosphere of prayer can
accomplish at the bedside of a sick person.
God is giving comfort through you.
In a
certain sense, the Holy Spirit needs us in
order for him to be the “Paraclete.” He
wants to comfort, defend, and exhort, but he
has no mouth, hands, or eyes to “embody” his
consolation. Or better, he has our hands,
our eyes, our mouths. Just as our soul acts,
moves, and smiles through the members of our
body, so the Holy Spirit does the same
through the members of “his” body, the
Church and us. St. Paul recommends to the
early Christians, “Therefore encourage one
another” (1 Thessalonians 5:11); translated
literally the verb here means “make
yourselves paracletes for one another.” If
the consolation and the mercy we receive
from the Spirit do not flow from us to
others, if we selfishly want to keep it for
ourselves, then very soon it stagnates.
Let us
ask for grace from Mary, whom Christian
devotion honors with two titles that
together signify “paraclete”: “Consoler
of the Afflicted” and “Advocate for
Sinners.” She has certainly made herself a
“paraclete” for us! A text from the Second
Vatican Council says, “The Mother of Jesus
shine[s] forth on earth, until the day of
the Lord shall come (cf. 2 Peter 3:10), as a
sign of sure hope and solace to the people
of God during its sojourn on earth.”86
Notes
78
St. Basil, On the Holy Spirit, XVI,
39, in Letters and Select Works,
trans. Blomfield Jackson, vol. 8, Nicene
and Post-Nicene Fathers (repr., Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), p. 25; see PG
32, p. 140.
79
Roman Missal, Tuesday after Pentecost.
80
Origen, Homilies on Luke, 34, trans.
Joseph T. Lienhard, vol. 94, Fathers of the
Church (Washington, DC: Catholic University
of America Press, 1996), pp. 139-140; see
SCh 87, p. 401.
81
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae,
I–IIae, q. 106, a. 2.
82
Ibid., q. 106, a. 1; see also St. Augustine,
The Spirit and the Letter, 21, 36,
pp. 221–222.
83
St. Augustine, The Spirit and the
Letter, 19, 34: “The law was given
that grace might be sought; grace was given
that the law might be fulfilled” (p. 220).
84
See Martin Luther, “Sermon for Pentecost,” The
Sermons of Martin Luther, vol. 3
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book, 2000), pp.
273–287.
85 The phrase comes from a
1835 drama by the nineteenth-century German
author Georg Büchner, Danton’s Death
[Dantons Tod], trans. Howard Brenton
and Jane Margaret Fry (London: Methuen,
1982), p. 43. In Act 3, a character asks,
“Why do I suffer? That is the rock of
atheism.”
86 Lumen gentium,
n. 68
Excerpt from The Gaze
of Mercy: A Commentary on Divine and Human
Mercy, © 2015 Raniero Cantalamessa,
published by The Word Among Us Press. Used
with permission.
 |
Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa,
O.F.M. Cap. (born July 22, 1934) is an
Italian Catholic priest in the Order
of Friars Minor Capuchin. He has
devoted his ministry to preaching and
writing. He is a Scripture scholar,
theologian, and noted author of
numerous books. Since 1980 he has
served as the Preacher to the Papal
Household under Pope John Paul II,
Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis.
He is a noted ecumenist and frequent
worldwide speaker, and a member of the
Catholic Delegation for the Dialogue
with the Pentecostal Churches.
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