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June 2, 2014 By Fr. Spencer

Sermon for Ascension I

The Ascension - Rembrandt 1636 — The Ascension – Rembrandt
1636

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” Romans 8:28-29

By the time Paul had written these words the Ascension of Christ was a historical fact at the ripe age of about 25 years old. When I turned 25 years old I joked that I was one-quarter of a century old. When I turned 50 years old fractions based on a century were no longer funny to me. Still if you think of your life as divided up into quarters it is interesting to me that 25 years is such a short span, but for most people most of the time life is finished without using up all the fingers on one hand. Where were you 25 years ago? 25 years prior to writing this epistle Paul was doing everything within his power to wipe Christianity off the face of the earth. He hated Christians with what he regarded as a holy and righteous hatred that was equaled in force only to his love for the Torah. He not only consented but he was also complicit in the martyrdom of Stephen and other Christians. His infamy had spread throughout the fledging Church so that even after his conversion to Christ fear and suspicion was the default position of Christians regarding Paul. And yet within three years of writing this epistle Paul was under house arrest in Rome and only a few years later, in the early 60s, he was beheaded in the reign Nero Caesar for the very love of the person he had once so hated, Jesus Christ. And think about the fact that at the time of his death the total worldwide population of the Church was only 4-5,000 souls. If you were have told Paul that based on the statistics at that point things were not looking too good for the Kingdom of God, after he had ascertained how you got through the guards into his study, he would have told you not to worry. And maybe he would have had you take a seat while he took the time to give you a little perspective. Now hold that thought for a few minute while we get into Romans chapter 8 beginning with verse 28.

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Earlier in chapter 8 St. Paul cited the fact that the creation is groaning and longing for the final redemption of the world, which shall be signaled, by the redemption of our bodies, that is we Christians, at the resurrection. But, Paul points out, the creature does not groan by itself because the Church groans as well:

“And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for … the redemption of our body.” Romans 8:23

This groaning that Paul refers to is a result of man’s actual sin in the world and that sin is a result of the fall. Remember last week we explored the effects of the fall of Adam: man’s nature is essentially good and he is the Image of God, and yet because of the wounds of the fall to his interior life and the deprivation of the Holy Spirit he is not capable of realizing the good that would save him from sin and return this drifting creation to God. The Holy Spirit awakened, reawakened and unified Adam’s powers and faculties in a free and godly harmony prior to the fall. And it is the gift of the Holy Spirit restored to man through Jesus Christ that now makes it possible for you to love God “with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,” and thy neighbor as thy self. Now by virtue of regeneration in Holy Baptism and feeding upon the life of God in the Blessed Sacrament you may walk in the Holy Spirit. And that is why Paul makes one last parallel in Romans 8 about our groaning: the creature groans awaiting our resurrection, and parallel to and in solidarity with the creature we groan awaiting our resurrection, and parallel to that double groaning, the Holy Spirit enters the narrative with an unutterable litany of groaning:

“Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Romans 8: 26

What I want you to see that the big difference for us is not that a Christian is the Image of God, because every man or woman ever born is the Image of God – it is the sine quo non of being human. Like I said last week take away the Image of God and human beings are just hairless primates that stand upright and possess big brains. The big difference for us is that we are members of Christ’s Church and have been born again as God’s children, forgiven, pardoned for our sins, and that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who now enables you to, as Paul put it to “walk in the Spirit” and thereby to fulfill of all things the most basic requirements of the Torah.

“That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” Romans 8:4

For several weeks I have spoken about the Image of God in all men, but now I wish to narrow our focus to the Church:

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28

With verse 28 Paul ties together in a living tether the three groanings of the creature, the Church, and the Spirit. From the start in Romans Paul declared the Gospel of Jesus Christ to be the power of God for salvation of the whole world, God’s Gospel which is about the Son’s faith in and his faithfulness to his Father, as well as God’s covenant faithfulness and how human beings may enter that covenant and then in chapter 8 the Spirit suddenly and without much introduction enters the narrative as the pivotal player. Four times the word for spirit is used in Romans before we get to chapter 8 and maybe one of those occurrences is a reference to the Holy Spirit and I have serious doubts about that. But then in chapter 8 there are 20 references to the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. Why? The reason there are 20 references to the Holy Spirit in Romans 8 is because it is with that chapter that Paul reached the denouement and he drew the strands of his narrative together so that we can see that it is the restoration of the Holy Spirit to man that has brought forth a new epoch – what some of the early Church Father’s call the 8^th day of creation. Though the sin of man has made a wasteland of creation, God has heard the bitter groaning of the creature and the man and he has responded with his own groaning; “the Spirit itself (making) intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” And with the entrance of the Holy Spirit, Christ begins to wipe away the tears from our eyes as we continue to wait for the final resurrection, and learn how to walk in the Spirit and to fulfill the most basic requirement of the Torah which is to love God with our whole heart:

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28

Paul identifies as “God-lovers” those who are led by the Holy Spirit and have learned from Christ to address his Father as our Father because, by the grace of baptism, we are the children of God. The groanings of the Church through the Holy Spirit are transformed into the worship of God in prayers and hymns and spiritual songs, which are possible because of the heavenly virtues infused in us when we were baptized. All of this is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Paul is saying that because the Spirit intercedes for us with heavenly prayers, God then works things for our good, which means that God’s intent is to use Church for working out the good for all creation because that is our final cause and thus our final cause is our greatest good. That is what it means to be “the called according to his purpose.” It is our highest good as Christians, as the Church to be whom God has called us to be which is to know and to actualize God’s finality for humanity in the life of the Church. That is what Paul means when he says that regardless of the nature of all the potential emerging probabilities in life or in the whole universe for that matter, emerging probabilities that God’s already knows unconditionally – God intends to use those emerging probabilities and actual events to form us not in the Image of God, which we already are, but rather God has determined to use “all things” to perfect us in the Image of God, and much more to Paul’s point to conform Christians to the image of his Son, Jesus Christ:

“For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” Romans 8:29

This is as far as we will get today, but for those who are excited about the notion of being predestinated to salvation please note that a Christian’s predestination is not, as I have said, to the Image of God, but to the Christian’s predestination is to conformity “to the image of his Son.” Now please understand that St. Paul is neither a determinist, nor a physicalist, nor a fatalist, for whom human freedom, or obedience, or intelligence, or responsibility, or love are empty fictions. What we have here is not fate or determinism, but another expression of God’s final cause for humanity. I have already elaborated on fact that we come to know Image of God as we consciously and intentionally get active with the transcendental imperatives: Be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, and be responsible. But because human being are the Image of God and because the Second Person of the Trinity himself has become a human being, then human beings may become Christians, sons of God the Father, siblings of God the Son by the grace of regeneration; and we are predestined to the image and likeness of his Son because that is God’s final cause for us and that image and likeness is living out of what others have called the fifth transcendental imperative: “be loving.” Furthermore the Image of the Son will be understood as a Christian consciously and intentionally increases his activity of loving like Christ, which is the activity of self-sacrificing love. It is a matter of taking on the form of servant, a slave, a person who makes no claims for himself, but only to love God and to do his will without self-interest. That is what predestination is about – being betrayed by your friends, being lied about, being cited as an enemy of the state and a God-hater when you are a God-lover, and finally to be impaled upon a cross. We will stop there.

If one looks back over the last 25 years of one’s life one will see how things may have gone in radically different directions from time to time had it not been for what at the moment one experienced as a galling influence, or at other times wounding disappointments, and then again there may have been those events we knew to be personal human tragedies that nearly drove one to give up, and in addition to all that there are the exigencies in our life. It takes time and some experience with the self-giving love of Christ, as well as our feeble attempts to imitate his love, to gain a needful Christian perspective on the moment.

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” Romans 8:28-29

April 15, 2014 By Fr. Spencer

Sermon for Palm Sunday

Christ Crucified - Velazquez 1632 — Christ Crucified – Velazquez 1632

“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men… he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross… Wherefore God hath highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow…” Philippians 2

“And when he had scourged Jesus he delivered him to be crucified. Then the soldiers took Jesus… and they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe: and when they had platted a crown of thorns they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand. And they bowed the knee before him and mocked him saying: Hail, King of the Jews.” Matthew 27: 26-29

Here is the young man St. Paul has written about in his letter to the Romans Christians; the man whose name is upon Paul’s lips day and night, the young man Paul says is the Seed of Abraham; the Son of the Promise; the man Paul declares to be God himself in the first sentence he wrote:

“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God… Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead…”

Though he is the Son of God, Jesus did not stride through Israel three feet off the ground; nor did the splendor of the Shekinah beam from his holy face. By New Testament accounts he did not attract much attention; so unimposing was the boy that in his twelfth year he went missing a whole day before anyone knew it. Next he showed up on the banks for the Jordon when he was about twenty-eight-years-old and only after John points him out did his first disciples take notice. A Samaritan woman drawing water from a well identified him as a Jewish man – that is all, at first. He was indeed a man or as Pilate would put it “The Man.” By simply looking at him you would not have guessed that he could walk on water, heal the sick with his touch, multiply the loaves and fishes, raise the dead, forgive sin, terrify demons, and enrage the priestly elite of Israel. But he did. The Jews had attempted to take him several times, but he simply walked away and they would not take him until he was ready. When Judas betrayed him in the Garden a band of Roman soldiers accompanied the Jews. Apparently they were expecting a fight. “Whom seek ye?” said Jesus. “Jesus of Nazareth,” they answered. “I am he,” Jesus said. The Bible records that when he spoke the whole lot stepped back and stumbling over one another they fell to the ground. But, by what we call 9:00 a.m., the Roman soldiers with near clinical skill had made of him a bloody mess, nailed to wooden beams till he died. About 26 years later the former rabbi re-named “Paul” wrote to a Church in Philippi and quoted a hymn they all knew:

“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men… he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross…” Philippians 2

The Creator entered into his creation as a creature so that the creature may enter into the uncreated life of the Creator. Before celebrating our Lord’s Incarnation, Paul’s hymn begins with the declaration that Jesus is in and of himself God Almighty.

“Who being in the form of God…”

The word that has been translated form is the word Aristotle used to speak of the formal cause, which was a component of the essential nature of a thing. It does not mean form, as in only the appearance of a thing. That Christ was in the form of God does not mean that he is like God, or is similar to God, or that he only appears to be God. No. When the Church of Philippi sang “Who being in the form of God,” they meant that Jesus Christ was in fact God Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth.

The same word is used again in the translation, “the form of a servant. ”

“(Christ) took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men”

This is what it means: Jesus Christ is God and this God became a real human being. He has always been God and he always will be God but he has not always been a human being and he became a human being just like all of us: he had a Mother. He didn’t disguise himself as a human being. He became one of us; the Creator became a creature, body and all. But he became a specific type of creature, a specific type of human being. Not royalty. Not a philosopher. Not even a good citizen. He took upon himself the standing of a slave, a nobody in the eyes of both Jew and Greek. But he became a real human being, a real man, fragile as any other man and beset by the same human contingencies that beset us all. How fragile? Besides experiencing and communicating hunger, thirst, and weariness, he communicated to his disciples his own private, interior experience of temptation, and ultimately the Roman authorities put him to death. God became flesh, he did not merely animate a piece of flesh to disguise his true identity or speak from behind a mask of human flesh. Furthermore God’s human flesh is now part and parcel of his true identity and it always will be. In Genesis we have the narrative of man made in the image of God while in life of Jesus Christ we have the narrative of God made in the image of man. In the story of God’s life made flesh we see not only the uncreated glory of the only begotten Son, but we also see the created glory of his creature man uplifted as God has always intended. And I submit to you that the uplifting and the deification of man and the bestowal of God’s glory upon him was the purpose of creation and the Incarnation brought forth God’s finality; the Incarnation was not God’s back up plan, it was his only plan and it finishes his will for his creature.”

Well, why does this matter to Paul and why is he making this point to the Philippians? Here it is: The Philippians were an ambitious people and in their world it was a matter of “civic pride” to acquire personal honor, credit, and distinction by achieving their ambitions. You cover your city with glory and your city covers you with meaning. Human finality was to be found in the city. Philip II, the father of Alexander the Great founded Philippi and yes it was destroyed, but then it was rebuilt by Augustus Caesar who though declared to be divine by the Roman senate rejected monarchial titles and simply preferred to be known as Princeps Civitatis, the First Citizen. Philippi was steeped in Roman custom and Law and they were proud to be Roman citizens. What was true for Philippi was true for all the cities in Roman antiquity. Paul worried over the Philippians because he knew the claims the city lay upon her citizens and he knew devotion to the city had divide the Church in Philippi; not doctrine, but the Roman virtue of personal pride, position, competition and achievement had divided some members. Paul reminds the Philippians that their “citizenship” is in Heaven.

Years later St. John Chrysostom, in a similar manner, worried over his parishioners in city of Antioch because he knew that beyond the walls of the Christian household, the city was filled with dangers that might wreck Christians and their families: the perils of sex and avarice, but even more deforming to the Christian was the grand vision of the civic man, the good citizen as man’s final cause. A by-product the grand vision of the civic man and possibly the greatest danger to Chrysostom’s flock, was the old Roman social stratification that dehumanized the poor and especially reduced poor, vulnerable, young girls to “atimoi” – non-persons. The weakest people, the nobodies, the most fragile whose image God took upon himself, are used as means to any cheap end. Let’s get back to Jesus now. Just prior to Jesus’ arrest in the Garden, after instituting the Blessed Sacrament, he gathered up his men and he prayed:

“Father, glorify thou me in thy own presence with the glory which I had with thee before the world was…”

“And now I am no more in the world, but they (my disciples) are in the world, and I am coming to thee. Holy Father keep them in thy name…”

“Father, I desire that they also…may be with me where I am, to behold my glory which thou hast given me in thy love for me before the foundation of the world.”

Having gathered strength from his Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus then opened himself up completely to Satan’s final assault. Jesus’ hour had come upon the world.

“And when he had scourged Jesus he delivered him to be crucified. Then the soldiers took Jesus… and they stripped him, and put on him a scarlet robe… And they bowed the knee before him and mocked him saying: Hail, King of the Jews.”

God clothed our first Parents with the skins animals not to cover our shame but rather that we might know from the inside out sin’s finality with regard to creation. Now the moment of Jesus’ glory had come and after scourging the Shepherd of Love, the Roman soldiers covered God made Flesh with a scarlet robe, the blood soaked banner that proclaimed Jesus’ never failing faith in his Father, and they quickly took Jesus off to Golgotha, a high spot not far away. There they nailed him to the cross. He was placed between two criminals but his cross would have been a bit higher since he was the important person being executed. The crosses of the criminals would have been seven or eight feet high; Jesus’ cross would have been no more than nine or ten feet high. The Romans wanted their feet just off the ground for heartless reasons. Some of Israel’s priests followed and stood by the cross mocking him:

“If thou be the Son of God come down from the cross and we will believe him.”

We have heard that voice before:

“If thou be the Son of God turn these stones into bread.”

Again the chief priests repeat what we have heard so many times before:

“He saved other, himself he cannot save: if he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him…”

In the same manner that the serpent offered divinity to Adam his own way, the chief priests became the mouthpiece of Satan offered Jesus the Kingdom without a cross. The young man who died on the cross is God. He has taken our nature into himself and became one of us – body and all. And he has made us partakers of the Divine nature. He has emptied himself for love of his Father and you. And now you and I are called to empty yourself for love of him and others.

“Then the soldiers… platted a crown of thorns and put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand. And they bowed the knee before him, and mocked him, saying: ‘Hail, King of the Jews.’”

May 9, 2012 By Fr. Spencer

The Accuser of the World

“Howbeit when he, the Spirit of Truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth…He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you.”

Here is the situation. The Last Discourse presents us with the Beloved Disciple’s account of Jesus’ last evening with his disciples. John continues putting before the reader the overwhelming sadness in the room, Jesus’ constant references to returning to his Father, and this new information that once he returned to his Father, he would send the Paraclete. “Your hearts are full of sadness.” They hardly understood anything Jesus was saying and it would be sometime down the road before the Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit would give them insight into what Jesus calls “the way of all truth.”

For a moment let us examine the meaning of the word “Comforter.” The Greek word in the text is Paraclete. Literally it means “one called alongside to help” and so we get English translations like Advocate and Comforter. The identity of the Comforter is the Holy Spirit. If we look at how the Paraclete functions in this passage this is what we get: Beginning sometime soon after the events described in the Farwell Discourse, He will essentially stand in for Jesus till the General Resurrection. He will bring back to the Apostles’ memory the words of Jesus and he will give them insight into their meaning. He will enable the apostolic eyewitnesses to function as Apostles. But it appears that the overarching work of the Paraclete will be to act as the defense witness for Jesus in the context of his trail before his enemies. Furthermore it is as though Jesus’ trial before the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem and Pilate (which from their point-of-view is only hours away) will not be over when Pilate delivers his verdict, but when God delivers his final verdict.

Furthermore, our participation in Christ is to be so through going – note his prayer in John 17 “I am not praying for the world but for those whom thou hast given me, for they are thine; all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them… “ And again, “For their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth.” Our identity is so radically altered by our participation in Christ that his trial is our trial and our trial before the world is his trial. It is as though we stand accused alongside Jesus and he stands accused alongside us in the world so that the allegations brought against us in this world are tantamount to re-trying Jesus. But we have nothing to fear. Because the Holy Spirit will defend us just as Jesus had said: “When they haul you into court do not worry about defending yourself for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that same hour what to say.” It is not enough that the Holy Spirit will act as our Advocate; He will also turn the tables and prosecute those who brought charges against Jesus and those who presumed to judge his disciples. In his defense of Jesus and in his defense of Jesus’ disciples, the Holy Spirit will shine a light on this world’s bankruptcy of truth and legitimacy.

So first, the Accuser of the World, the Holy Spirit

“will prove that the world is in sin…”

The Paraclete will show the disciples that the enemies of Jesus are all guilty of the sin of deliberate disbelief in Jesus. Our Lord himself said,

“The Light has come into the world, but men have preferred darkness to light because their deeds were evil.”

These evil deeds are specifically the refusal to believe in Jesus and the collateral damage that entails that disbelief. That sin reaches its sickening conclusion in the Cross. But further the Paraclete will show that the sin of unbelief is not limited to that historic circle of evil men who put Jesus on trial. No! That very sin of unbelief is the sin of the world today. We may think that is a bit harsh. After all we may reason, “Just because a person does not believe in Jesus doesn’t mean they are hostile toward him.” If they are not hostile it is because they think it silly to believe in such nonsense or they do not know the historic Jesus.

“(He will prove) the world is not righteous, because I go to my Father”

The Paraclete reveals that the world’s sense of justice is in fact immoral because Jesus is innocent of the charges laid against him. Before and during his trial he was accused of blasphemy for claiming to be equal with God. “I and my Father are one.” He was guilty not only of astonishing arrogance, but he was a sinner, a deceiver and blasphemer according to his enemies. They were sure he was not God’s son and sentenced him to death. But in fact, he tells his disciples repeatedly that he is returning to his Father. The Paraclete will come to the disciples only after he has returned to this Father. And that is what happened. On Pentecost Peter and the other Apostles took it to the street in Jerusalem and proclaimed Jesus’ as the Saviour of the World. Only a few months later St. Stephen himself, full of the Holy Spirit, as he was about to be stoned to death in Jerusalem, bore witness to Jesus’ innocence and victory:

“I see the glory of God, and Jesus standing right next to his Father.”

Finally the Paraclete will prove that in judging Jesus guilty and not believing in him, the world’s judgment has recoiled upon itself.

“(He will show that) the world is judged, because the prince of this world is judged…”

His enemies thought they had victory. But in the Cross Jesus confronted the prince of this world and Jesus now stands justified before his Father. In his Resurrection he has conquered death and hell and it is the world that is found guilty.

Now with all three of these actions, the Paraclete infuses courage into the disciples in those critical early days after our Lord’s Resurrection and Ascension and especially after the persecutions began. But I want to underline this: the courage, the resilience, the strength Jesus promised in the Paraclete was meant for the whole Church in time and space and not just the disciples who were with him that evening.

Imagine what it was like for these little parishes scattered all over the world when the last of the apostolic eyewitnesses died. The Apostle was a living cord joining the Church to Jesus of Nazareth. As long as they were present these apostolic eyewitnesses could interpret the meaning of the gospel narrative, the meaning of Jesus’ very word and deed for every situation the Church faced. For example, these apostolic eyewitnesses would have to interpret the meaning of the persecution of the Church after the deaths of James and Stephen. They gave voice to what Jesus would have said about the existential realities and exigencies they were facing, many of which were horrible.

Imaginatively place yourself in one of these tiny parishes that had grown up around the apostolic eyewitnesses. What do you think would happen when these eyewitnesses began to die? James died in Jerusalem in 62 AD. Stephen too. Paul was beheaded in Rome around 66 – 67 AD. Around the same time St. Peter was crucified. It is the universal testimony of the Church that last Apostle to die was the Beloved Disciple, John. He was a very old man and he died around the year 100 AD. Now that is amazing since that date is within a handful of years backward or forward for the ministry of St. Polycarp who had spent a good deal of time with John. That would also be contemporaneous with the life of St. Ignatius of Antioch, whose letters we have.

Now when the Beloved Disciple finally died I imagine it was a major crisis for his churches, not unlike what he and the other disciples had experienced when Jesus informed them that he was returning to his Father. As long as Jesus was with them they were safe. In the same way, as long as John was alive he was a sure interpreter of everything Jesus said and did. John’s own disciples – the deacons, priests and bishops he had ordained could return to him time and again to asked questions and obtain his directions. They could hang out with him like Polycarp did. John had been a companion of Jesus. When John laid his hands upon you, you knew that those very hands had touched and had been touched by the hands of Jesus Christ.

What got these little parishes through the crisis of the death of the Beloved Disciple? I will tell you what got them through. It was that document he had written and re-written, and rewritten which final form we know as the Gospel of John. And in particular the Farwell Discourse. Yes, these apostolic eyewitnesses were the Pillars of the Church, living links between Jesus of Nazareth and the baptized. But it was not merely their own memories or even their own personal experiences that made them the trustworthy interpreters of all that Jesus did or said. No, it was not merely their personal experiences, it was the gift of the Holy Spirit that not only quickened their memories of the words of Jesus, but also gave them, as it were, Jesus’ own interpretation of his words and deeds – that made them reliable. The Church at first probably placed her confidence in the personal experiences of the Apostles, but in time Holy Mother Church came to place all her confidence the gift of the Holy Spirit. She came to understand that the Paraclete guided the eyewitnesses, like the Beloved Disciple, and he would continue to guide the Church and her members after the death of the Beloved Disciple. The Paraclete indwells Church and all her members. And because of that, those men and women who buried the Beloved Apostle and Ignatius and Polycarp, and those of us here today who believe in Jesus and kneel to receive his Body and Blood are as close to Jesus as were the apostolic eyewitnesses themselves. That is what the Church believes.

“Howbeit when he, the Spirit of Truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth…He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you.”