Daily Mass Gospel Reflection - Holy Guidance

Word on Fire Ministry ^ | 5-10-2021 | Aux. Bishop R. Barron

[MurphsLaw]

SIXTH WEEK OF EASTER

JOHN 15:26–16:4A

Friends, today’s Gospel focuses on the Holy Spirit’s role as witness to Jesus: “When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me.”

All Christian preaching is ultimately about the Paschal Mystery—the suffering, dying, and rising of Jesus—and the sending of the Holy Spirit. But this last element is especially important for today, because it signals the way that we are able to participate in the life that Jesus opens up to us.

One of the chief marks of the Holy Spirit is the prompting to bold speech. From the Apostles through the great evangelists and theologians, up to Billy Graham and John Paul II, the Spirit prompts people to confess the Lordship of Jesus. Remember that Paul told us, “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit.”

Who is the Holy Spirit? He is the third person of the Holy Trinity, but more precisely, the love shared by the Father and the Son. As the love between Father and Son, the Spirit comes most fully to historical expression during the great events of the Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery.

[MurphsLaw]

+++“I have told you this so that you may not fall away. They will expel you from the synagogues; in fact, the hour is coming when everyone who kills you will think he is offering worship to God."+++

[Marchmain]

A father and son requires a mother. Is the Holy Spirit the feminine aspect of God, or is it Mary, the mother of the Incarnation?

[ebb tide]

Silly question.

Jesus never referred to the Paraclete as a mother figure nor even in the feminine sense.

But new guard novus ordo “apologists” like Scott Hahn argue otherwise.

A question for Hahn: Since the Blessed Mother was with the apostles in the upper room at the first Pentecost, were there two “mothers” in the house?

[ebb tide]

And how was “Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary..” if the Holy Ghost is feminine?

Did Jesus Christ have two Mommies?

[MurphsLaw]

A father and son requires a mother. Is the Holy Spirit the feminine aspect of God, or is it Mary, the mother of the Incarnation?

Well ...complex as the Trinity is... I don’t think we can look at it that way.
The “aspect” of the Holy Spirit is a reference point in the Incarnation, but not defined by it. Start with the creed....

I believe in one God,
the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.

Eternally begotten..... before all ages.... Begotten not made- begotten of God, of the same being..... Jesus is God By the POWER of the Holy Spirit.... the third person of the Trinity facilitated the Incarnation and it was God who so loved the world..... So the Holy Spirit is God as well...
With regard to the Incarnaton....CS Lewis wrote:
God 'begotten, not created'; and it adds `begotten by his Father before all worlds'. Will you please get it quite clear that this has nothing to do with the fact that when
Christ was born on earth as a man, that man was the son of a virgin? We are not now thinking about the Virgin Birth. We are thinking about something that happened before Nature was created at all, before time began. `Before all worlds' Christ is begotten, not created. What does it mean?

I think we get off track when we try to be definitively human with regard to Divinity . At the same time though, we can only understand the supernatural in terms of our own nature. So it’s gonna be messy. The Triune God- 3 persons - yet still 1 - Is pretty hard to wrap your head around- but it obviously is something different than our human binary thinking. If theY are all of the same being As God - HOW could they be different as we believe In One God.. It is Only when they are revealed as three Persons of the Trinity do Jesus and the Holy Spirit assume different natures for our understanding.
I like the description that the Holy Spirit is the manifested Love between the Father and Son as 3 persons- and then singularly One Love- as God’s being is “To Love“. Can we relate that to a feminine Love, in some aspect of the Trinity? as found in Judeo-Christian thinking ? A Mother’s Love? Is the Advocate also a source of Wisdom for our journey? And is Wisdom often referred to as feminine In ancient language?.. So it’s possible maybe for an assignment of gender-like qualities to The Spirit in some capacity- WITHOUT needing to be binary about it? Does it help us better understand the abstract with opare human limitations?...it’s hard enough to understand The Trinity.... let alone giving the Christian outrage mob one more thing to wag their finger at.....

Below is a note from Scott Hahn addressing such outrage.....

Dr. Scott Hahn:
I am grateful for your blog and also for your kind words. And I appreciate your concern about my understanding of the Holy Spirit, and some of the bridal-maternal aspects that may (or may not) pertain to the Holy Spirit's Person and work. Please allow me to share some thoughts that might help to alleviate your concerns.
First, I have never once referred to the Holy Spirit as feminine, as the ancient gnostics did. Indeed, I expressly deny the Holy Spirit is feminine in my book First Comes Love (both editions).
I do quote Cardinal Ratzinger, from his book, Daughter Zion (p. 27), where he states: "Because of the teaching about the Spirit, one can as it were practically have a presentiment of the primordial type of the feminine, in a mysterious, veiled manner, within God himself." I subsequently go on to clarify Ratzinger's point by stating: "Once again: God is not feminine by nature. Nor is the Holy Spirit feminine" (pp. 163, 166).
I then proceed to quote the Catechism's teaching about God: “He is neither man nor woman. God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the difference between the sexes. But the respective ‘perfections’ of man and woman reflect something of the infinite perfection of God: those of a mother and those of a father and husband” (CCC 370).
As to my patristic sources, I quote first, from a baptismal homily of St. Aphrahat (who speaks of "God his Father and the Holy Spirit his mother"); second, from a homily by St. Macarius (who speaks of how "Adam no longer saw the true Father, nor the good Mother the grace of the Spirit, nor the desirable brother, the Lord"); and third, from the Syriac rite of pre-baptismal anointing (where the Holy Spirit is called upon,"Come, Mother of the seven houses").
As you mentioned, I quote St. Ephrem, a Doctor of the Church, who actually refers to the Holy Spirit as "Mother" on many occasions (in homilies, hymns and prayers). I also cite St. Catherine of Siena, another Doctor of the Church, who wrote: "The Holy Spirit becomes a mother who feeds them from the breast of divine charity."
But I draw most extensively from modern Catholic saints and theologians of unimpeachable orthodoxy. So for instance, St. Maximillian Kolbe speaks of the Holy Spirit as the "Uncreated Immaculate Concepion," and the Blessed Virgin Mary as the "quasi-incarnation of the Holy Spirit."
St. Teresa Benedict of the Cross (Edith Stein) writes: "Thus we can see the prototype of the feminine being in the Spirit of God poured over all creatures. It finds its perfect image in the purest Virgin who is the bride of God and mother of all mankind."
The great 19th century German Thomist theologian, Matthias Joseph Scheeben, who is generally acknowledged to be the founder of Mariology as a distinct branch of Sacred Theology), writes: ""As the mother is the bond of love between father and child, so in God the Holy Spirit is the bond of love between the Father and the Son." He also notes: "As Eve can, in a figurative sense, be called simply the rib of Adam... St. Methodius goes so far as to assert that the Holy Spirit is the rib of the Word (costa Verbi)" (Mysteries of Christianity, 183-85).
I go on to show how this notion is affirmed by many other notable theologians: R. Garrigou-Lagrange, OP; L. Bouyer; J. Kentenich; B. Ashley, OP; Cardinal Y. Congar (Tradition & Traditions, pp. 372-75); F.X. Durrwell; A. Feuillet; H.M. Manteau-Bonamy, OP (The Immaculate Conception and the Holy Spirit).
All of this does not prove that bridal and maternal elements are proper to the Holy Spirit's Person and work, of course; but it does indicate how highly unoriginal I am in exploring something that has never been condemned by the Church's Magisterium. Nor should this ever be linked to (or confused with) the bizarre speculations of the ancient gnostics, who rejected the Incarnation and Trinity in favor of bizarre aeon-schemes drawn from a pantheistic/emmanationist view of God and the world.
Likewise, it should be noted that this approach to bridal-maternal aspects of the Holy Spirit is generally rejected as abhorrent to feminist scholars, like Catherine LaCugna, who warns that "the Spirit's activities should not be stereotyped according to gender-determined roles for women.... Further, the association of feminine imagery solely with the Spirit would reinforce the subordination of women in church and society" (cited in First Comes Love, p. 206).