Here is the fourth Lenten sermon for 2009 by Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the Pontifical Household, which he gave Friday at the Vatican in the presence of Benedict XVI and the Curia.
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"We too, who have the first fruits of the Spirit,
even we are groaning inside ourselves, waiting with
eagerness" (Romans 8:23).
The Holy Spirit, Soul of Christian Eschatology
1. The Spirit of the promise
Let us listen to the passage from the eighth chapter of
the Letter to the Romans which we want to meditate on
today: "And not only that: we too, who have the
first-fruits of the Spirit, even we are groaning inside
ourselves, waiting with eagerness for our bodies to be
set free. In hope, we already have salvation; in hope,
not visibly present, or we should not be hoping
— nobody goes on hoping for something which is
already visible. But having this hope for what we cannot
yet see, we are able to wait for it with persevering
confidence" (Romans 8:23-25).
In the Scriptures we find the same tension between
promise and fulfillment with regards to the person of
Christ as with regards to the person of the Holy Spirit.
Just as Christ was first promised in the Scriptures,
then later made manifest in the flesh, and then awaited
in his second coming, so also the Spirit, once "promised
by the Father," was poured out at Pentecost, and is now
once again awaited and invoked "with indescribable
moaning" by mankind and all creation, who, having tasted
the first fruits, await the fullness of this gift.
During this period of time that spans from Pentecost to
the Parousia, the Spirit is the strength that pushes us
forward, that keeps us on the path, that doesn't allow
us to become a "sedentary" people, that makes us sing
the "psalms of ascension" with a new enthusiasm: "What
joy when they told me: we will go up to the house of the
Lord!" He is the one who creates the momentum and, so to
say, gives wings to our hope; what is more, he is the
very principle and soul of our hope.
Two authors speak to us about the Spirit as "promise" in
the New Testament: Luke and Paul. But, as we will see,
there is an important difference. In the gospel of Luke
and in the Acts of the Apostles it is Jesus himself who
speaks of the Spirit as "the Father's promise." He says,
"I will send my Father's promise upon you;" "While at
table with them, he had told them not to leave
Jerusalem, but to wait there for what the Father had
promised. 'It is,' he had said, 'what you have heard me
speak about: John baptized with water but, not many days
from now, you are going to be baptized with the Holy
Spirit'" (Acts 1:4-5).
What is Jesus talking about when he calls the Holy
Spirit the Father's promise? Where is it that the Father
made this promise? It could be said that the entire Old
Testament is a promise of the Spirit. The work of the
Messiah is constantly presented as being fulfilled in a
new universal pouring out of God's Spirit upon the
earth. Looking at what Peter says the day of Pentecost
shows that Luke thinks particularly about Joel's
prophecies: "In the last days
— the Lord declares
— I shall pour out my Spirit on all humanity"
(Acts 2:17).
It is not only these prophecies. How can we not also
think about what we read in the other prophets? "Until
the spirit is poured out on us from above" (Isaiah
32:15). "I shall pour out my spirit on your descendants"
(Isaiah 44:3). "I shall put my spirit in you" (Ezekiel
36:27).
With regards to the content of the promise, Luke
highlights, as he often does, the charismatic aspect of
the gifts of the Spirit, in particular the gift of
prophecy. The Father's promise is the "strength from on
high" that will make all disciples capable of bringing
salvation to the ends of the earth. However he does not
ignore the deeper, sanctifying and salvific aspects of
the Spirit's actions, such as the remission of sins, the
gift of a new law and of a new covenant, as can be taken
from the juxtaposition he creates between Sinai and
Pentecost. Peters words: "The promise that was made is
for you" (Acts 2:39) refer to the promise of salvation,
not just the promise of prophecy or some other charisms.
2. The Spirit as first fruit and pledge
As we move from Luke to Paul, we enter into a new
perspective, theologically much deeper. He lists
numerous objects of the promise: justification, divine
sonship, inheritance; but what summarizes everything
else, the object of the promise par excellence is the
Holy Spirit himself who he calls both "promise of the
Spirit" (Galatians 3:14) and "Spirit of the promise"
(Ephesians 1:13).
The Apostle introduces two new ideas into the concept of
promise. The first is that God's promise does not depend
on the observance of the Law, but on faith on thus on
grace. God doesn't promise the Spirit to those who
observe the law, but rather to those who believe in
Christ. "How was it that you received the Spirit
— was it by the practice of the Law, or by
believing in the message you heard? If the inheritance
comes by the Law, it no longer comes through a promise"
(Galatians 3:2,18).
In Paul it is precisely through the concept of promise
that the theology of the Holy Spirit is tied to the rest
of his thought and it even becomes a concrete
demonstration of his thought. Christians well know that
it is after the preaching of the Gospel they first
experienced the Holy Spirit, not because they subjected
themselves to a more faithful observance of the law. The
Apostle can base himself on a well-known fact.
The second new concept is a bit disconcerting in a way.
It is as if Paul wants to nip in the bud any temptation
to be overly "enthusiastic," saying that the promise is
not yet fulfilled … at least fully! In this regard,
there are two very revealing concepts that are applied
to the Holy Spirit: first fruits (aparchè) e deposit (arrabôn).
The first concept is present in our text of Romans 8,
the other is found in the Second Letter to the
Corinthians. "We too, who have the first-fruits of the
Spirit, even we are groaning inside ourselves, waiting
with eagerness for our bodies to be set free" (Romans
8:23). "It is God who gives us, with you, a sure place
in Christ and has both anointed us and marked us with
his seal, giving us as pledge the Spirit in our hearts"
(2 Corinthians 1:21-22). "It is God who designed us for
this very purpose, and he has given us the Spirit as a
pledge" (2 Corinthians 5:5).
What is the Apostle trying to say? That the fulfillment
worked by Christ has not exhausted the Holy Spirit. In a
unique contrast he says, "we possess ... in
expectation," we possess and we await. It is precisely
because that which we possess is not yet fullness, but
only a first fruit, a foretaste that hope is born in us.
What is more, the desire, the longing, the expectation
grows even more intense than they were because now we
know what the Holy Spirit is. The coming of the Holy
Spirit has, in a manner of speaking, fanned the flame of
human desire.
This happens the same way it happened with Christ: His
coming has fulfilled all the promises, but has not ended
the wait. The wait has restarted, under the form of
waiting for his return in glory. The title of "the
Father's promise" puts the Holy Spirit at the very heart
of Christian eschatology. Therefore we can't accept the
statements of certain authors without reservations.
According to these authors, "in the Judeo-Christian
construct, the Spirit was primarily the strength of the
future world, and in the Hellenistic-Christian construct
it is the strength of the superior world." Paul
demonstrates that the two concepts don't necessarily
contradict each other, but can rather coexist together.
In him the Spirit is, at the same time, both a reality
of the superior, divine world and the strength of the
world to come.
In the journey from first fruits to fullness, the first
fruits will not be thrown away to make space for the
fullness; rather the first fruits will themselves turn
into the fullness. We will keep what we already have and
we will acquire that which we do not now possess. It
will be the Holy Spirit himself who will expand in
fullness.
The theological principle "grace is the beginning of
glory," applied to the Holy Spirit means that the first
fruits are the beginning of the fulfillment, the
beginning of glory, part of it. There is no need, in
this case, to translate arrabôn, as "pledge" (pignus),
rather just as deposit (arra). The pledge is not the
beginning of the payment, but rather something that is
given in lieu of payment. Once payment has been made,
the pledge is returned. A deposit does not function in
the same manner. The deposit is not returned when full
payment is made, rather payment is completed. It is
itself part of the payment. "If God has given us as a
pledge the love through his Spirit, when the whole
reality is given to us, will the pledge be taken away?
Certainly not, but it will complete what he has already
given."[1]
The love of God that we sample, thanks to the deposit of
the Spirit, is therefore of the same quality as that we
will have in eternal life, but not of the same
intensity. The same thing should be said about
possessing the Holy Spirit.
A deep transformation has taken place, as we can see, in
the meaning of the feast of Pentecost. In the beginning,
Pentecost was the feast of the first fruits,[2] that is,
the day when the first fruits of the harvest were
offered to God. Now it is still the feast of the first
fruits, but the first fruits that God offers humanity,
in his Spirit. The roles of giver and beneficiary have
been reversed, in perfect accord with that which occurs,
in all fields, in passing from law to grace, from
salvation as a work of man, to salvation as God's free
gift.
This explains how the interpretation of Pentecost as a
feast of the first fruits has so strangely had almost no
influence in the Christian feast of Pentecost. St.
Irenaeus made an attempt in this direction, saying that
the day of Pentecost "The Spirit offered the Father the
first fruits of all people,"[3] but this would have
almost no following in Christian thought.
3. The Holy Spirit soul of Tradition
The patristic age, unlike all the other aspects of
pneumatology, does not significantly contribute to the
concept of the Spirit as promise. This is due to the
little interest that the Church Fathers have in the
historical and eschatological perspective, compared to
the ontological. St. Basil has a nice text on the role
of the Spirit in the final consummation. He writes,
"Even at the moment of the Lord's awaited manifestation
from the heavens, the Holy Spirit will not be absent. …
Who could so ignore the good things God prepares for
those who are worthy as not to understand that event the
crown of the just ones is a grace of the Holy
Spirit."[4] However, if we read closely, the Saint only
says that the Holy Spirit will have an active part in
the final phase of human history, when we will pass from
time to eternity. What is missing is any reflection on
what the Holy Spirit already does, now, in time, to spur
humanity toward its fulfillment. What is lacking is the
sense of the Holy Spirit as a catalyst, a driving force
of God's people, on route toward the homeland.
The Spirit drives believers to be vigilant in waiting
for Christ's return, teaching the Church to say "Come,
Lord Jesus" (Revelation 22:20). When the Spirit says
Marana-tha with the Church, it is like when he says Abba
in the heart of the believer: we should understand that
he makes it be said, that he becomes the Church's voice.
In fact the Paraclete could not cry out Abba on his own,
because he is not the Father's son, and he could not cry
out Marana-tha, "Come, Lord," because he is not Christ's
servant, but rather "Lord" on par with him, as we
profess in the creed.
Jesus says of the Paraclete, "He will make known to you
the things to come" (John 16:14): That is, he will
disclose the knowledge of the new order of things that
comes from the Resurrection. Thus the Holy Spirit is the
stimulus of Christian eschatology, the one who keeps the
Church facing forward, toward the return of the Lord.
This is just what current biblical and theological
thought has tried to highlight. Moltmann writes that the
new existence, inspired by the Spirit, is already
eschatological, without waiting for the final moment of
parousia, in the sense that it is the beginning of a
life that will fully manifest itself only when the
manner of existence determined by the Spirit is
established, no longer held hostage by the flesh. The
Spirit is not promise in only a static sense, but also
the force of the promise, he who make us grasp the
possibility of liberation, who makes the chains feel
even heavier and more intolerable, and thus drives us to
break them.[5]
This Pauline vision of the Holy Spirit as a promise and
first fruit allows us to discover the true sense of the
Tradition of the Church. Tradition is not primarily a
collection of things that have been "transmitted," but
rather, it is in the first place the dynamic principle
of transmission. What is more, it is the very life of
the Church, in as much as it unfolds in fidelity to
Jesus Christ, driven by the Spirit under the guide of
the Magisterium. St. Irenaeus writes that revelation is
"like a precious deposit held in a valuable vase, that
thanks to God's Spirit, renews itself always and even
renews the vase that holds it."[6] The valuable vase
that renews itself along with what it contains is
precisely the preaching of the Church and Tradition.
Because of this, the Holy Spirit is the soul of
Tradition. If the Holy Spirit is removed or forgotten
what remains is just dead letter. If, as St. Thomas
Aquinas says, "Without the grace of the Holy Spirit even
the precepts of the Gospel would be letter that kills,"
what can we say about Tradition?
Tradition is, therefore, a force of permanence and
conservation of the past, but it is also a force of
innovation and growth; it is both memory and
anticipation. It is like the wave of apostolic preaching
that advances and propagates throughout the
centuries.[7] The wave cannot be understood without
movement. Freezing tradition in a certain moment of
history would mean making it a "dead tradition," no
longer a "living tradition" as St. Irenaeus calls it.
4. The Holy Spirit makes us abound in hope
With his encyclical on hope, the Holy Father Benedict
XVI points out the practical consequence that comes from
our meditation: hope, hope always, and if we have
already hoped a thousand times in vain, return and hope
again! The encyclical's title "Spe Salvi" (In Hope We
Have Been Saved) is taken right from the Pauline verse
we have commented on. It begins with these words:
"According to the Christian faith, 'redemption'
— salvation
— is not simply a given. Redemption is offered to
us in the sense that we have been given hope,
trustworthy hope, by virtue of which we can face our
present: The present, even if it is arduous, can be
lived and accepted if it leads toward a goal, if we can
be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough
to justify the effort of the journey."
A certain equivalence and interchangeability is
established between hoping and being saved, just as also
between hoping and believing. The Pope writes, "Faith is
hope," thus confirming, from a theological perspective,
the poetic intuition of Charles Péguy, who begins his
poem on the second virtue with the words, "The faith I
prefer, says God, is hope."
Just as we distinguish two types of faith, the "fides
quae creditur" and the "fides qua creditur," that is,
the things believed and the very act of believing, the
same applies to hope. There is objective hope that
indicates the thing hoped for, eternal life, and there
is subjective hope, which is the very act of hoping for
that thing. This second thing is a driving force, and
internal catalyst, and extension of the soul, an opening
of oneself toward the future. One of the early Church
fathers called it, "A loving migration of the spirit
toward that which it hopes for."[8]
Paul helps us discover the vital relationship that there
is between the theological virtue of hope and the Holy
Spirit. He ties all three theological virtues back to
the action of the Holy Spirit. He writes: "In fact, by
virtue of the Spirit, we wait for justice from faith
which is the object of hope; since in Christ Jesus it is
not being circumcised or being uncircumcised that can
effect anything
— only faith working through love."[9]
The Holy Spirit thus appears to us as the wellspring and
the strength of our theological life. It is due to him,
in particular, that we can "be abounding in hope." A bit
later in the Letter to the Romans the Apostle writes,
"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in
your faith, so that in the power of the Holy Spirit you
may be rich in hope" (Romans 15:13). "The God of hope,"
what an unusual definition of God!
Hope has been sometimes been called the "poor relation"
among the three theological virtues. There has been, it
is true, a movement of intense reflection on the theme
of hope, even to the point of creating a "theology of
hope." But what has been lacking is a reflection on the
relationship between hope and the Holy Spirit. Yet we
cannot understand the peculiarity of Christian hope and
its distinction from every other idea of hope, if we do
not see it within its intimate relationship with the
Holy Spirit. He is the one that makes the difference
between the "principle of hope" of Ernst Bloch and the
theological virtue of hope. The theological virtues are
such not only because they have God as their end, but
also because they have God as their principle; God is
not only their object, but also their cause. They are
caused, infused, by God.
We need hope to live and we need the Holy Spirit to
hope! Every moment is a good one to hope, but above all
the time of tribulation, the Apostle writes: "Knowing
that affliction produces endurance, and endurance,
proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope
does not disappoint, because the love of God has been
poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that
has been given to us" (Romans 5:3-5). Hope is the most
necessary virtue in this time of crisis for the world
and of tribulation for the Church.
One of the principle dangers in the spiritual life is
that of discouragement when faced with the repetition of
the same sins and the seemingly useless cycle of
resolution and relapse. Hope saves us. It gives us the
strength to start over again, to believe each time that
it will work, the strength of true conversion. In this
way, God's heart is moved and he will come to our aid
with his grace.
The poet of hope goes on to say, or has God say: "Faith
does not surprise me, says God. I shine so much through
my creation. Charity does not surprise me, says God.
Those poor creatures are so unhappy that, unless they
have a heart of stone, how could they not have charity
toward one another. … But hope, says God, that is what
surprises me. That these poor children see how things
are going and that they believe that it will get better
tomorrow. This is shocking. It must be that my grace is
truly an incredible force."[10]
We cannot be satisfied with keeping hope just to
ourselves. The Holy Spirit wants to make us planters of
hope. There is no gift more beautiful than spreading
hope at home, in the community, in the local and
universal Church. It is like certain modern products
that clean the air, making the whole room smell
beautiful.
I end this series of Lenten meditations with a text from
Paul VI that summarizes many of the points I have
touched on: "We have asked ourselves may times … what
need do we see, in the first and final analysis, for
this our blessed and beloved Church. We should say it in
an almost fearful and prayerful way, because it is his
mystery and his life, you know it: the Spirit, the Holy
Spirit, animator and sanctifier of the Church, her
divine breath, the wind in her sails, her unifying
principle, her interior source of light and strength,
her support and consolation, her source of charism and
song, her peace and her joy, her pledge and prelude of
blessed and eternal life. The Church needs his perennial
Pentecost; she needs fire in her heart, word on her
lips, and prophecy in her vision… The Church needs to
recover the desire, the taste, and the certainty of her
truth."[11]
By the merit of his passion and death, the Resurrection
gives to all us, the Holy Easter, a renewal of his
Spirit.
* * *
[1] St. Augustine, Sermons, 23, 9 (CC 41, p. 314).
[2] Cfr. Numbers 28:26; Leviticus 23:10.
[3] St. Ireneus, Adv. Haer., III, 17,2; cf. also
Eusebius of di Cesarea, On Easter, 4 (PG 24, 700A).
[4] St. Basil, On the Holy Spirit, XVI, 40 (PG 32,
141A).
[5] Cf. J. Moltmann, Lo Spirito della vita, Brescia
1994, pp. 18. 92 s. 190.
[6] St. Ireneus, Adv. Haer. III, 24, 1.
[7] H. Holstein, La tradition dans l'Eglise, Grasset,
Parigi 1960 (Trad. ital. La tradizione nella Chiesa,
Vita e Pensiero, Milano 1968.
[8] Diadocus of Fotica, Chapters, Introduction (SCh 5,
p.84).
[9] Galatians 5:5-6; cfr. Romans 5:5
[10] Ch. Péguy, Le porche du mystère de la deuxième
vertu, in Œuvres poétiques complètes, Gallimard, Paris
1975, pp. 531 ss.
[11] Paul VI, Discours at the general audience of 29
November 1972 (Insegnamenti di Paolo VI, Tipografia
Poliglotta Vaticana, X, pp. 1210s.).