 
Owing to their ignorance of the Holy Ghost, many Catholics remain cold and tepid all their lives and never enjoy the religion of peace and love that Christ gave us. For instance, Holy Communion, with all its immense joys, is by many little understood and little loved. They receive it but do not enjoy it, nor do they know what oceans of graces they could get in every Communion. Therefore, they receive Holy Communion coldly and seldom. In Communion, it is God Himself, the Great Creator, the Omnipotent God, Who comes into our souls. He comes with infinite love. He remains in us as long as the Sacred Host retains the appearance of bread. That may be for a long time. Oh, what precious moments! He comes into us with infinite love and unites Himself so intimately with our soul that He becomes one with us. One Communion is sufficient to make us Saints. Little Imelda became a Saint by one Holy Communion, simply because, with the light of the Holy Ghost, she understood the wonders of Communion. We do not understand Holy Communion because we do not ask the Holy Ghost to give us His light, which He would most certainly do if we only asked Him. All eternity will not be sufficient to thank God for one Holy Communion. Zaccheus, the publican and the sinner, received Our Lord once into his house, and that one visit made him a Saint. Our Lord comes, not into our houses, but into our very souls, not once, but many times, and we derive but little benefit from His visits; whereas, one Communion, as we have said, is enough to make a Saint. Mary Magdalen and Martha were filled with joy when Jesus visited them in their home in Bethany. We should enjoy Our Lord's visit as they did, but, far from it, many swallow the Sacred Host and at once begin to read their prayerbooks. We can well understand the joy and delight of St. Catherine of Siena, St. Rose of Lima, St. Anthony and other Saints when Our Lord appeared and spoke lovingly to them in their rooms, as He often did. In Communion, He does much more for us. He comes really and truly into our souls, with a most tender love. Oh, what graces could we not receive if only we asked for light from the Holy Ghost! Then there is the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, where He is waiting for us, ready to hear our prayers and give us every grace. Yet, many Catholics rarely or never visit Him, although they pass the church door frequently. They have difficulties and they have sorrows. They seek help and consolation from others, who cannot give it. Why do they not go to Our Lord and ask Him for help? When on earth, He consoled and comforted all who went to Him. He is here too on a throne of mercy. It is incalculable what graces we could receive in one short visit to the Blessed Sacrament. Yet the churches are for the greater part of the day almost empty. [Father wrote this passage before modern life rendered leaving many churches opened an impossibility or so we are told: our churches are locked now.-----The Web Master] It is true that some do understand this mystery of love. There are many doctors, lawyers, businessmen, pious women who pay two or four visits every day to the Blessed Sacrament on their way to or from business. This shows that others could do the same. Protestants and unbelievers are naturally surprised and ask: "If you believe that your God, a God of infinite Goodness, is on the altar waiting for you, why don't you go to see Him and pray to Him?" It seems incredible that Catholics do not open their eyes to the fact that God is really there waiting for them. The reason is that they do not pray to the Holy Ghost. St. Teresa, after death, appeared to one of her nuns and said: "You ought to do before the Blessed Sacrament what we do in Heaven, for it is the very same God that you have on the altar that we have in Heaven." Next, there is the great Sacrifice of the Mass, which is in every way equal to the death of Christ on the Cross. Every Mass brings oceans of graces to the Earth, but especially, to those who assist at it. There is nothing on earth equal to the Mass, and nothing in Heaven greater. Multitudes of Angels assist at every Mass and gladly offer our prayers to God, thereby giving our petitions a marvelous efficacy. Everyone would like to see a miracle. Above all, one would like to see a dead man raised to life. That, indeed, would be a wonder that one could never forget. But in every Mass a far greater wonder is wrought. The priest does much more than raise a dead man to life; he transforms the little host into the Body and Blood of the Son of God Himself. We can say that Jesus is born and Jesus dies in the Mass for love of us. Notwithstanding this, many Catholics fail to assist at Mass. It is celebrated at a short distance from their homes, but they are too lazy, too careless to get up and assist at it. Oh, did they know the immense graces and favors they receive at every Mass, they would hear not one, but many Masses every day! We ask again, "What is the cause of their blindness?" It is always the same, viz., they do not pray to the Holy Ghost. Prayer. There is nothing easier, nothing more consoling than prayer. It is easier to pray well than to pray badly. All that is necessary is to know how to pray. The whole secret is that when we pray we are talking to God personally and intimately. He is looking at us lovingly, listening to us, ready to give us everything. Let us understand once and for all that when praying we are in God's very presence. This is not a metaphor or a way of speaking. It is the plain truth. Those who pray this way get more by one prayer than others by a hundred. Who would not like to talk to God, to a God Who is so good, Who is ready to give us everything? If we only asked the Holy Ghost, He would teach us how to grasp this truth. All these wonderful graces, joys and consolations we lose by our want of love for the Holy Ghost. THE LOVE OF GOD The greatest of all our obligations, the greatest source of merit, our greatest possible consolation is to love God. One act of love is worth a thousand acts of any other virtue. No work, however important, is worth anything unless it be inspired by love of God. The First Great Commandment is to love God with all our heart and soul. It is the basis and the very essence of our religion. Yet many Christians have little or no love of God. They find no consolation in making acts of love. They tell us themselves that when they repeat an act of love, they feel nothing in their hearts corresponding to the words. They adore God, they serve God, they pray to God, they fear God. Their idea of God is false; they think of Him as a severe God, a stern God, but do not think of Him as a God of infinite love, sweetness and mercy. As a consequence, they fail to get the immense merits they could so easily get in their daily lives, they never enjoy the friendship of God which would be their supreme happiness. God has done everything to make us love Him. He commands us to call Him Father, that is, Father in the truest sense of the word, the most loving, tender Father. God has made, as He tells us Himself, the last supreme effort to gain our love, by offering us His Sacred Heart as the emblem, the pledge of His most tender love for us. He has made 12 most loving promises to all who are devout to His Sacred Heart, but few, indeed, ever think of these wonderful promises. How is it that we are so blind, so cold, so unloving? It is always the same answer, viz.: we do not ask the Holy Ghost for His Light. THE PASSION One of the greatest losses we suffer by not being devoted to the Holy Ghost is our incredible blindness regarding the Great Mystery of the Passion. Our Lord suffered the most ignominious and cruel death to save us. He could have saved us with one word or with one drop of His Precious Blood. Why did He submit Himself to such outrages, blasphemies and insults? Simply to compel us to love Him, to prove to us in the clearest possible way how much He loved us. He died not for all in general.
He died for each one of us in particular. He saw you, dear Reader, clearly
and distinctly, and offered every pang of pain, every drop of His Precious
Blood for you.
We do not here speak of mere emotional love, but of a clear intellectual understanding of God's love which He showed by His sufferings and death. Why is it that we do not grasp this Great Mystery? It is because we have not the light of the Holy Ghost. All the Saints were Saints because they understood the Passion, and there was never a Saint who did not love and was not grateful to Our Lord for suffering for us. It is not possible to understand this Divine Proof of love and not love back. Let us then beg and implore the Holy Ghost to help us to understand the infinite love of Our Lord for us in the Passion.
We receive, as already said, by prayer, good works and the Sacraments, an increase of the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit, but there are three Sacraments which we might call Sacraments of the Holy Ghost, viz., Baptism, Confirmation and Confession. BAPTISM The Holy Ghost does not come into our souls personally when we are created, nor when we are born into this world, but when we are Baptized. In Baptism our souls are purified from the horrible leprosy of Original Sin and clothed with Sanctifying Grace, of which we have just spoken. It is in Baptism that the Holy Ghost enters personally and takes up His residence in our souls, and makes them His living temples. How foolish, then, are the parents who defer the Baptism of their children! They are depriving them of the loving presence and protection of the Holy Ghost. The life of a child is so frail that it may die at any moment. How awful if the child were to die and be deprived forever of seeing God, of going to Heaven! The writer of these lines had once the sadness of seeing a little child die thus suddenly. The fact is worth narrating. A priest was asked to Baptize the child, which he gladly consented to do. Days passed and the Baptism did not take place. Retiring to rest one night, the thought flashed across his mind of the danger of the child's dying. He had no especial reason for his fear, but acting on the inspiration, he insisted next day on the Baptism being performed at once. This was done, fortunately, and not a day too soon, for the child died unexpectedly from a sudden fit of convulsions. Unfortunately, many children do die unexpectedly without Baptism. What a dreadful responsibility for the parents! CONFIRMATION Confirmation is in a most special way the Sacrament of the Holy Ghost, for though He comes into our souls in Baptism and makes them His living temples, it is in Confirmation that we receive Him in all His plenitude. The Apostles had received Him, too,
before Our Lord went up to Heaven, for He had said to them: "Receive ye
the Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven; whose
sins you shall retain, they are retained; but as we saw, it was at Pentecost
that they received Him in all His fullness.
As a rule, care is taken that boys and girls who are to be confirmed know their Catechism. But, incredibly, many times they are taught very little, or nothing at all, about the Holy Ghost Himself! They are not taught how to love and honor Him. They do not know the wonderful graces He gives them. They seldom or never pray to Him. As a consequence, they do not receive Confirmation with that joy and delight with which they receive their First Communion. Still worse, during all their life after they do not cherish the love and devotion they ought to for the Holy Ghost. They are thus deprived of the immense help and consolations they should enjoy. Teachers are responsible for this neglect. They themselves seem to know little about the Holy Ghost. It is the case of the blind leading the blind. Dear Teachers who read these lines, strive to teach your students henceforth to love the Holy Ghost. CONFESSION Confession, too, is in a special way a Sacrament of the Holy Ghost. It is a wonderful Sacrament and is a very river of graces. a) Only God can forgive sin, for it demands an omnipotent, Divine power. The highest Angels in Heaven cannot forgive a single sin. The Holy Ghost gives this Divine power to priests, to whom He says: "Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven." St. Augustine says that when a priest forgives a sin, he uses a power greater than the power God Himself used in creating the world. In proportion to this Divine power are the graces given in Confession. b) Yet another fact: If anyone should commit a mortal sin and so expel the Holy Ghost from his soul, Confession purifies the soul in the Blood of Jesus Christ and brings back the Holy Ghost, who once more comes to dwell in the soul as in His Temple and gives it again all His gifts and graces. Many people come to Confession in the most casual, off-hand way. They have venial and mortal sins on their souls but do not realize the awful malice and filth of those sins. Did they see their souls in the state of sin, they would die of horror. Cardinal Newman observes that were we to see a body in an advanced state of corruption, the stench and appearance of it would fill us with horror and disgust. Yet such corruption is nothing in comparison with that of a soul in sin. To show how true this is, a venial sin may detain a soul in the awful fires of Purgatory for a long time. A mortal sin detains a soul in Hell forever and ever. These sins, therefore, must be very dreadful to deserve such awful punishment. God does not punish a sin simply because He is angry, but because the malice of sin demands that punishment. So true is this that, were a soul to enter Heaven in the state of venial sin, it would of its own accord hurl itself into the fires of Purgatory, to be there cleansed from that sin. Notwithstanding this, people come to Confession with but little sorrow and compunction and scarcely thank God for cleansing them from this hideous corruption. When Our Lord cured the ten lepers of their awful disease, only one came back to thank Him. We are justly indignant at such vile ingratitude, yet many of us are far more ungrateful, for we thank God so little for curing us of the leprosy of sin, which is incomparably more vile. The malice of sin is dreadful; the corruption, the filth of sin is awful; but there is something far, far worse, and that is that sin is a direct, personal offense and outrage to the Majesty of God. Few Catholics think of this. The consequence is that their sorrow for in is but little and their resolution to avoid sin is far from being as firm and sincere as it ought to be. They do not make proper preparation for Confession. Therefore, they do not receive in their Confessions the wonderful graces that they should receive. Some Catholics fail to derive the consolation and help from Confession that they should. Our Blessed Lord in Confession gives us a friend to whom we can declare all our troubles and who is ready to console and comfort all who kneel at his feet. He has been prepared by many years' study for this all-important part of his mission. He does not give his opinions, but the doctrine of the Church and the counsels of the Saints, and he is, moreover, helped and inspired by the Holy Ghost, Whose minister he is. Penitents do well to listen to his counsels and put them into practice. They should ask advice in their doubts and difficulties. Strange to say, Protestants sometimes seem to understand this part of Confession better than Catholics, and, moreover, some enter the Catholic Church expressly that they may be able to go to Confession! The reason is that these Catholics have not the light of the Holy Ghost. They do not love and they do not pray to the Holy Ghost. E-MAIL HOME----------------------------------------PURGATORY www.catholictradition.org/Tradition/holy-ghost5.htm |
