Faster Than A Speeding Bullet
Man has always been fascinated by the possibility of a superhero—someone who has superhuman powers who can do things of which the rest of us are incapable. We look around us and we don’t find anyone remotely resembling this type of mystical being. And so we invent them, whether they be the ancient gods of the Greeks and Romans, the genies of Eastern legends, or in today’s age, the heroes of Marvel Comics, superheroes faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Our own creativity, however, falls far short of that of the divine Creator himself, who actually did place in our world beings more wonderful than we could possibly have imagined.
These beings created by God and which are mightier than us mere mortals, are of course the Angels. He created them as something entirely unique, neither God nor man but something in between. Angels are like God in that they are pure spirit without a body. They are like man by being creatures with free will to choose good or evil. They are not omnipotent like God, but nevertheless their intelligence is highly superior to our own. So too are their choices, in that once made they are definitive and cannot be changed. Thus, the moral test they were given in the beginning of time was a choice that would last for all eternity. They would choose either to be loyal to God or to rebel against him, and that choice, because of their very angelic nature, could never be withdrawn. An Angel cannot change its mind, and if they chose to rebel, that rebellion must go on forever. So you see, having “powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men” has its downside.
As mere mortal men we might be forever changing our minds, but this does at least give us the ability to rise from our mistakes. We are capable of repentance for our crimes, sorrow for our sins. We know when we’ve fouled up in one way or another, and we figure out how to make good on our past errors. It is engraved in our human nature to feel guilty about the wrong we do and to try and improve ourselves by avoiding future occasions of sin. Our blessed Lord even gave us a sacrament specifically for the purpose of wiping clean our slate of misadventures and starting our life of grace afresh. You’ll never find an angel in the confessional line, except our good Guardian Angel encouraging us to go confess, or the occasional bad one trying to persuade us not to bother.
In the confessional we are absolved from all the sins we have committed up to that moment in time. Even the sins we have legitimately forgotten are wiped clean by the words of absolution from the priest and the merciful kindness of God. We must always remember, however, that our future sins are not forgiven. On the contrary, we make a firm resolution not to sin again, and without that resolution, even our past sins remain as blots on our soul. Absolution is not a free pass for future misbehavior and our free will remains as intact as ever to choose between the right and the wrong path on our journey through life.
At some point, however, that life will end. At that point, our state of grace or lack thereof, will be decided indefinitely and with no further opportunity to repent, to decide to do better, or to choose good over evil. Like the angels, we will find our eternal future etched in stone, with Salvation or Damnation being writ indelibly in large letters on our soul. And while we will not be able to repent our evil deeds, we will certainly regret them, and with a bitterness unlike anything we have ever known or imagined. We will know in the moment of our death the fate that awaits us, and the final words we hear from our Divine Judge will be, literally forever, engraved on our hearts.
In today’s Gospel, we are placed in the shoes of our Lord’s disciples as they stand by him, worrying about what comes next. Here is the Son of God made Man. He has dwelled amongst us—from the moment of his conception in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary where he lived for nine months, from his Nativity in Bethlehem another thirty years until his Baptism in the Jordan, and then for three more years of public life teaching and healing, making the blind to see and the lame to walk, confirming his divinity with miracle after miracle. Finally, he has now dwelled amongst them again for several weeks since his Resurrection from the dead. But now what? Will he now live with them forever? Apparently not, as he has been speaking with them about being with them just a little while longer after which they will not see him. So where is he going? What will become of them when he leaves them? And they dared not ask him.
But now he chooses to address their concerns. Yes, he says, he must go away, but if he does so, it is only in order that he might send his Holy Spirit, the Comforter who will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness and of judgment. The importance of these three things shall the Holy Ghost soon prove to the world, and how wrong they have been about all of them. Think about it—the majority of folks in this our world today are oblivious of the horror of sin, freely committing them in abundance and in all defiance of the laws of God. Our “woke” world certainly no respect for the ideals of honor and righteousness, and has nothing but contempt for those who do. And what thought does our fellow man give to the judgment he will one day receive? The Holy Ghost, through his seven gifts, provides us with the wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of God that we need in order to be able to choose righteousness over sin, so that we may be mercifully judged when the time comes.
The angels do not need these gifts because they do not evolve through time. Our human lives on the contrary are nothing but a pathway filled with changes in our character as we progress naturally from the innocence of the child to the rebellious curiosity of youth to the wisdom of our senior years. As noted, we constantly change our minds. We are not like the angels who, having made a decision, can never reverse it. And we are certainly far from the nature of God, whom St. James describes as “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” We turn all the time, and let us thank God for that as it means we can always convert our souls and bring them closer to him. We walk a path of constant change, and the gifts of the Holy Ghost are there to comfort us in this our path. Each of them is crucially important to making those right choices that face us every day. And unless our Lord first ascends back into his heavenly mansions this Holy Ghost, this Comforter, cannot proceed from God to man.
When we receive the Holy Ghost once more at Pentecost we may not become superheroes overnight. Certainly we cannot change the course of mighty rivers, or bend steel in our bare hands. And we will definitely not turn into angels overnight. But we will be given the tools we need to battle the fallen angels, the world and the weakness of our own nature with the help of those Sevenfold Gifts. During this time leading up to Pentecost we must ask for this help, invoking the presence of the Holy Ghost within us, beseeching him to inspire us with his heavenly love that we might change our wicked ways. We must ask God most fervently to receive the Holy Ghost and begin to use his gifts to their full benefit. The world is changing for the worse. May the Holy Ghost help us to bring about the right changes in our own poor sinful souls.