Going in the Spirit of Truth to the Modern Areopagi, Sixth Wednesday of Easter, May 20, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Easter
Memorial of St. Bernardine of Siena
May 20, 2020
Acts 17:15.22-18:1, Ps 148, Jn 16:12-15

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today in the Gospel, on the eve of the “Decenarium of the Holy Spirit” that begins tomorrow on the Solemnity of the Ascension,  Jesus speaks to us about how the Holy Spirit “will guide you to all truth” because “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.” Kindergarteners are not taught calculus, quantum physics or advanced semiotics for a reason, because they cannot handle it yet. There are various steps in learning and assimilation and God knows how he has made us. The transition from natural religion to the Covenants of the Old Testament was an enormous step in the learning curve; from Old Testament to New Covenant another. But that learning continues. It continued for the Church at the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, helping Christians not only to understand the significance of so much Jesus taught and did but to learn how to align their lives to that truth. That growth continues for each of us. The Holy Spirit continues to want to lead us to all truth, making explicit what was implicit in what has already been given and making vibrant what has remained dormant. Are we open to that continued formation?
• This is a  key work of the Holy Spirit. I’ve been reading St. John Paul II’s thoughts on the Holy Spirit over the course of the last few days — his encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem, his two years of catecheses during (1990-2) on the part of the Creed dedicated to  the Holy  Spirit, as well as his eight months of catecheses during the Year of the Holy Spirit (1998) — not only to mark his 100th birthday but also to prepare for the decenarium. In his encyclical, he uses the expression “Spirit of Truth” 42 times and how the Holy Spirit helps us to know, love and live the truth another 56, far more than any other expression. In a relativistic age, and one desperate for a New Evangelization, St. John Paul II focused on the mission of the Holy Spirit with regard to the truth more than under any other title. He wrote there, “It becomes clear that this ‘guiding into all the truth’ is connected not only with the scandal of the Cross, but also with everything that Christ ‘did and taught.’ For the mystery of Christ taken as a whole demands faith, since it is faith that adequately introduces man into the reality of the revealed mystery. The guiding into all the truth is therefore achieved in faith and through faith: and this is the work of the Spirit of truth and the result of his action in man. Here the Holy Spirit is to be man’s supreme guide and the light of the human spirit.”
• We see the Holy Spirit’s work in and through St. Paul as together with the Spirit the Apostle sought to lead the Athenians from what they knew into something much deeper. He began with their religiosity, surrounded by the statues of all the pagan gods, and praised their wisdom in the statue dedicated to the god they didn’t know. The statue to the Unknown god comes from the time of Epimenides who, according to Athenian legend, had been brought by them from Crete to rescue Athens after one of the leading families had murdered someone at the altar in the temple and soon the city began to suffer from political strife, a plague and various sorts of pollution, all of which the Athenians understood as a curse. Epimenides suggested that there might be a god unknown to them who would be willing to help Athens if proper sacrifices were made to him, and so the Athenians built many altars and made many sacrifices and the city was saved. Epimenides as a poet had written, “They fashioned a tomb for you, holy and high one, Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. But you are not dead: you live and abide forever, for in you we live and move and have our being.” In his Letter to Titus, Paul referenced how Cretans were “always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons” (Tit 1:12) which showed his familiarity with Epimenides, whose history and line about God being the one in whom we “live, move, and have our being” is quoted on Mars Hill.
• Much we like we spoke about when Paul preached to the Jews in the Synagogue of Antioch in Pisidia, he was accustomed to begin with people’s aspirations, then go to how Christ is the fulfillment of them, how he was rejected but God the Father raised him, and how now everyone needs to make a choice. While the premises needed to change while he was speaking to the non-Jewish Athenians at the Areopagus, the general structure remained. He began with their aspirations for salvation, citing the unknown God of Epimenides, their general religiosity seeking God, and the revelation they have in common through creation. He sought to help them to know the unknown God, and not just as one God among others, but as the one true and only God. He helped them to see that God was not made by hands out of marble but their maker. He helped them to see that he gave us Creation to get to know him through seeking, even groping, in order to find him. He helped them to see how God wants an intimate relationship with all of us, so that in him would “live and move and have our being” and grasp that we “are his offspring,” that he seeks to adopt us as his beloved children. And he helped them to see that life isn’t a debating society, that religion is not just a thing to think about, but the most consequential thing we do, because there is a judgment coming on which our continued life will depend. He concluded by speaking about Jesus’ bodily resurrection and saying that, in contrast to the Greek notion of the continuance alone of the soul, it is meant to harbinger our own.
• What was the reaction? There were three. The first group scoffed. The second procrastinated, saying that St. Paul’s message wasn’t important enough to act on today. The third was faith, as we see in Dionysius and Damaris. Those three reactions we can look at with regard to the work of the Holy Spirit in leading us into all truth. Some scoff, as if such a thing were impossible, who think they already know everything they need to and respond with hardened soil to God’s progressive revelation. Others put it off and read the daily newspaper or go about the chores of daily life. But the Holy Spirit wants us to respond by “joining” the Hoy Spirit and “believing.”
• St. John Paul II wrote in 1965 a series of 13 Meditations on St. Paul’s sermon in the Areopagus and what we can learn from it. We don’t know for whom he wrote it or whether it was ever delivered. But it has just been rediscovered and published in English by Ave Maria Press under the title Teachings for an Unbelieving World: Newly Discovered Reflections on Paul’s Sermon at the Areopagus. George Weigel and Scott Hahn give the Foreward and Introduction respectively, making it even more of a tour de force. The main point of the future Pope’s reflections is that we learn from St. Paul in Athens some of the main markers for the New Evangelization today. And St. John Paul in those reflections focuses on the work of the Holy Spirit, not only during Creation hovering over the waters but especially in the redemption. He writes that St. Paul’s message of conversion to the Athenians — “he demands that all people everywhere repent” — is one of the key works of the Holy Spirit, given to the Apostles in the Upper Room at the same time that Jesus was breathing on them and saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Quoting the Second Vatican Council’s Gaudium et Spes (10), John Paul says, “The Church firmly believes that Christ, who died and was raised up for all, can through His Spirit offer man the  light and strength to measure up to his supreme destiny.” He goes on, “No one else, only he the Spirit of Truth… can touch that profound discrepancy that is within the human being, that brokenness that is in him.” He does so by bringing something greater than evil, love, which has “been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given us” (Rom 5:5). The Spirit helps us, he adds, not only  to be witnesses to Christ together with him in all contexts but to pray with him for those who  will hear the world.
• Today the Church celebrates the Memorial of St. Bernardine of Siena who was called by the popes during his lifetime “another St. Paul.” Once, as a young man, he was listening to the great Dominican preacher St. Vincent Ferrer when Ferrer was preparing to leave Italy to begin preaching in France. The Italians wanted to detain him, but he said that among his listeners was someone who would continue his priestly mission. Bernadine would later realize that he was that one that Ferrer recognized. St. Bernardine, born in 380, suffered a great deal when he was young. He lost his mother at age 3 and his dad at age 7. He was raised by his Aunt. As a teenager, he began to work in hospitals, caring for the sick. But when the plague struck Siena in 1400, and many of the officials of the hotel fled, he organized 12 of his young friends as he assumed the direction of the hospital. He never was infected by the pestilence but the world load left him exhausted for four months afterward. After caring for a sick aunt until his death, he took time to ponder the direction of his life, before sensing a vocation to join the Franciscans of the Strict Observance in 1403. To help people remember the presence of Jesus with them seeking to save and sanctify them, he made a monogram with the first three letters in Greek of the name Jesus — IHS — on a tablet and leading those present in veneration and invocation. When people would ask him what to do in response to the presence of God, he  would tell them: “In all your actions, seek in the first place the kingdom of God and his glory. Direct all you do purely to his honor. Persevere in brotherly charity, and practice first all that you desire to teach others.” The payoff would be: “By this means the Holy Spirit will be your master, and will give you such wisdom and such a tongue that no adversary will be able to stand against you.” So by loving God with all our being and persevering in love of neighbor, we will open ourselves to the Holy Spirit and he will help us thereafter carry out the work of preaching the Gospel to the modern areopagi.
• Today at Mass, Jesus continues through the power of the Holy Spirit to teach us and guide us into all truth. He continues to nourish us, leading us to appreciate even more what we’re about to do by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that in our Eucharistic Lord we may “live, move and have our being.” Let us, through the intercession of St. Paul, St. Bernardine and St. John Paul, ask for the grace to correspond to the Holy Spirit as much as they did!

The readings for today’s Mass were:

Gospel JN 16:12-15

Jesus said to his disciples:
“I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.
But when he comes, the Spirit of truth,
he will guide you to all truth.
He will not speak on his own,
but he will speak what he hears,
and will declare to you the things that are coming.
He will glorify me,
because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.
Everything that the Father has is mine;
for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine
and declare it to you.”

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