Thursday, Fifth Week of EasterThe Acts of the Apostles
In the first book, Theophilus, I dealt with all that Jesus did and taught until the day he was taken up, after giving instruction through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.
Acts 1:1-2
We now begin Luke’s second volume. He begins by looking back to the end of Volume I. Jesus was “taken up” after he had instructed the apostles through the Holy Spirit.
We might say, “Whoa! We just finished reading the final chapter of Luke’s Gospel. The risen Lord himself, not the Holy Spirit instructed them.”
Don’t put distance between Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Luke sees all Jesus’ activities directed by the Spirit.
• At the very beginning of his public ministry we read: ”Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days.”
• In his first visit to the Nazareth synagogue, ”Jesus found the passage where it was written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me…’”
Jesus’ whole minisitry was immersed in the Spirit, and his ministry after the ascension will be the same. The Holy Spirit is not a second-rate substitute, as though Jesus sends his assistant. Jesus is present to us in the Spirit, and it is a first-rate, real presence.
If I look to the right or left of me, I won’t see Jesus. But he is present to me now – within me, around me – in and through the Holy Spirit.
Spend some quiet time with the Risen Lord.
April 28, 2005Feast of St. Catherine of Siena
Born in 1347, St. Catherine of Siena is famous for her Dialogues (written accounts of her revelations from Christ), and her Letters which initially gave spiritual instruction and encouragement, but gradually began to deal with public matters. Catherine lived during the Avignon Papacy, when the pope and his staff moved from Rome to southern France. Catherine not only wrote to the pope, respectfully chiding him for leaving Rome, but in 1376, the 29 year old woman visited him in Aivgnon and did the same.
Catherine died on this date in 1380 at the age of 33.
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In Rome along the Via Consolatione (the avenue leading up to St. Peter’s Square) is a large statue of St. Catherine. She appears to be in motion, bent a little as though walking in the wind. She is headed for St. Peter’s.
The statue stands on a large stone platform upon which are carved three scenes from her life. In the first Catherine (who could neither read nor write) is shown dictating her revelations to a stunned Dominican friar (possibly St. Raymond of Pentafort).
The second carved stone shows her at the execution of a prisoner in whose cell she had spent the night with him in prayer. She is kneeling on the “other side” of a guillotine, hold out her scapular to receive his severed head.
In the third, Catherine kneels at the feet of Pope Gregory XI, shaking her finger into his startled face.
