The liturgical texts of Eastertide have enabled us to participate in the joy of the Apostles, who enjoyed a precious forty days with Our Lord after His Resurrection, as He talked with them, taught them and dined with them. We have also witnessed the astonishing and wonderful effect that their encounter with our risen Lord had upon them. From fugitives huddled together behind locked doors ‘for fear of the Jews’, they became fearless evangelisers, preaching the news of the Resurrection throughout Jerusalem, even returning to the heart of lions’ den, the Temple. We can imagine the apprehension that the disciples must have felt when Our Lord explained that, after this period of contact and communication with His disciples, He must soon depart. However, He told them not to be sorrowful, but rather to rejoice. And we rejoice not only for God the Son, Who, mission accomplished, would now go to His Father in Heaven; we also rejoice for ourselves, in the knowledge that He has gone to prepare a place for us, taking His humanity and flesh and making Heaven a real ‘place’ for us.
If Our Lord had remained on earth in the form in which He walked and talked with the disciples after His Resurrection, then the Church would necessarily have remained a local phenomenon, focussed on where He happened to be present at any particular time. By His Ascension, He made way for the descent of the Holy Ghost on Our Lady and the Apostles at Pentecost, an event which really marks the birth of the Church as a truly Catholic entity, universally present in every subsequent age and spreading throughout all parts of the earth. Just as the soul maintains a continuity of memory and identity throughout the life of a human being as the individual cells of our bodies die and are replaced, so the Holy Ghost ensures the Church’s organic unity, and Her own continuity of memory and identity in every age, as generations of Catholics come and go.
The Gospel – that is, that Catholic Faith, including everything we need to know and to do to be saved (‘faith and morals’), as contained in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition – forms what is known as the Deposit of Faith. The Church has always taught that this Deposit of Faith was completed and sealed with the death of the last Apostle. This means that after St John the Evangelist, who died towards the end of the First Century A.D., there would be no new revelation until the return of Our Lord in glory to judge the living and the dead. The teaching mission of the Church, invested in the bishops as successors of the Apostles, is to safeguard, unpack and proclaim this Deposit of Faith in every generation. The presence of the Holy Ghost enables Her to proclaim this holy Gospel with nothing added and nothing subtracted.
Our Lord warned us to expect false prophets teaching in His name. In our own day we witness, and possibly experience ourselves, the spiritual turbulence caused by the stirring up of controversies over settled doctrines, most often in the area of morals. In Germany the dissenters have become so radical and loud that there is talk of open schism, but these problems are by no means confined to the Teutonic world. It is striking how often the innovators claim the Holy Spirit as their guide and inspiration. They should be more cautious: Our Lord has warned us of the dire consequences awaiting those who sin directly against the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. The confusion caused by these sterile debates, which dissipates the Church’s missionary energy, suggests that their source is not the Holy Spirit at all, but rather that spirit whom Our Lord identified as a deceiver and a murderer of souls from the beginning.
We must pray for the Church, then, as She navigates these choppy waters. We should, not, however, allow ourselves to be unsettled. If Our Lord has warned us to expect the appearance of hireling shepherds among the flock, then this is to prepare us in order that our faith might be tested and purified. We do not need to be drawn into fruitless controversies. Let the dead bury the dead. We, meanwhile, must look for our salvation and sanctification in living and sharing the Faith that has been taught with constancy and clarity down the centuries, turning our backs on anything that is in contradiction with the Deposit of Faith as received and lived by countless generations of saints. May the Holy Ghost guide, protect and purify the Church Militant, and keep us true to the Faith of our fathers; the one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic Faith, undiluted and uncontaminated by ambiguity and error.
Father Julian Large