We hear it frequently
asserted that Pentecost is the birthday of the Church. If it is, then it is
also the birth of the community which very soon in the ancient city of Antioch
would be called Christian. The Spirit, the community and the Church, themes of
Pentecost, are clearly reflected in the Apostles' Creed which professes a
belief in the "Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church and the communion of
Saints".
Even though this event
signals the birth of the Church, it was not something that happened out of the
blue. This is because salvation history is at the same time a pilgrimage of
freedom. A link can readily be established between the Pentecost we celebrate
and what took place at Mount Sinai. At Sinai, the journey of freedom that had
begun with the Exodus ended on the mountain when the Lord gave the community of
freed men and women the Law which determined their individual freedom. In the
context of both the newly founded Church and Christian community, this
individual freedom is now strengthened with the gift of the Holy Spirit.
It might be profitable
to reflect on how the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity, animates
the Church, the Body of Christ as it is relevant in a world that seems to have
elevated freedom as an individual property whilst forgetting its communal
implications.
Firstly, one of the
many gifts of the Holy Spirit is the healing of the breach brought about by
Babel where the two sins of pride and self-sufficiency resulted in discord and
division. With the Holy Spirit, the breaking down of frontier or borders is
always at the service of the common good. One cannot get more communal than the
Catechism's rich description of the Communion of Saints as a "sharing of
holy things amongst holy people".
Sadly, our notion of
the frontier is mostly conceived of in terms of the individual. Freedom is
defined as one's right with regard to individual expressions and often at the
expense of the whole. An amnesia regarding freedom is that we have forgotten
that "shared" freedom is always a freedom with individual limits.
Therefore, Pentecost as the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles is ultimately
the feast of love--love for God and for others. The Spirit is never a spirit of
the "self" that is overly concerned with "individual"
freedom. The word "individual" is a relational term because one is an
“individual” in relation to the "community". Freedom is always at the
service of the community. What is to be understood as "There are many
gifts but always the same Spirit" is that all the gifts of the Spirit are
gifts for the good of the whole, that is, the Body of Christ.
Secondly, nothing of
what Jesus taught will be lost. He gave the assurance that the Holy Spirit will
be the guarantor of His teaching. This guarantee of authenticity binds the
Spirit TO the Church. Here we encounter a truly troubled notion that many have
of the Church. "I love Jesus but I do not need the Church" or "I
am spiritual but not religious" are two examples of the predicament that
the Church is undergoing. The hierarchy especially, suffers from a crisis of
credibility. This is more so after the exposure of the cover-ups of scandals.
As a result, we have a credibility-deficit generation espousing a common
assumption that the content of a message is equivalent to the credibility of
the messenger. As long as someone is not credible, what he says is often
discounted as true. A good example of this is when the Prime Minister of a
particular country speaks, almost everyone will, except the “gullible[1]”,
immediately equates whatever he says to be lies. Conspiracy theories sprout
most easily in this integrity-deficit soil.
But, the Church is
important because she alone enjoys the guarantee of the Holy Spirit, a
guarantee which gives rise to the three properties of the Church: her
authority, infallibility and indefectibility. These properties are necessary
because the Church, born on Pentecost, through the Holy Spirit, is the
continuation of the mission of Christ in reconciling the world to the Father.
In fact, the magisterium and the sacraments, through the Spirit, find a direct
link back to Jesus Christ.
However, the mission of
Christ is in jeopardy because, for some reasons, the link between the Holy
Spirit and the Church seems to be have been severed. When the Holy Spirit is no
longer bound to (not by) the Church, it is easy to forget her divine pedigree
and therefore the mission entrusted to her. Instead, like any social
organisation, our task will always be to "update" her so that she can
serve whatever criteria that are current. When the Church's mission to evangelise
is no longer her raison d'être, then
evangelisation will simply be reduced to one of her many ministries. When she
cannot conform to what is demanded outside her mission, she will be labelled as
"staid" or conservative for want of a better word. And, those who
dare believe that the Church has a duty to pass on the deposit of the Apostolic
faith in its entirety will be looked upon as “rigidists” or “restorationists”.[2]
If the goal of Christ's
mission is liberation, then freedom is for us to worship the Father in Spirit
and in truth. But, here we are, lie-weary, disinformation-wary and
transparent-hungry. To speak of an institution[3]
capable of Truth is too good to be true. Catholics themselves do not believe
that this is possible[4].
Top that, enlightened western Europe has proudly proclaimed herself, if not in
words, then in actions, as post-Christian and therefore, post-Church. In a
Trump post-truth presidency, it would appear that truth serves at the pleasure
of power. He who has greater control over the media will have a greater truth.
How can the Church carry out her mission to evangelise when the belief that she
alone possesses the pledge of the Holy Spirit has been subverted?
Man is created with
this hunger for what is enduring and true. Wikileaks and Edward Snowden's
disclosures of classified information reveal to us that man can never run away
from his vocation which is to worship freely in Spirit and in truth. Without
any guarantee that Truth can be arrived at, "truth" will effortlessly
resort to subjective feelings and this usually means being "true" to
what one feels. However, the objectivity of truth can be gleaned from this
example. I feel murderous. Does it mean that to be true to myself, I need to
murder? We all know this to be a rubbish example and we arrive at this
knowledge because we instinctively recognise that there is a standard or
benchmark which beckons us to live up to it.
Where do we find this
standard? Is it sufficient that every religion holds a particular standard? If
that were true, then every religion is no more than an individual writ large
meaning that we are no better off than what we have now: "atomised
truth" where everyone believes it is enough that what is true is true for
himself. What if everyone in a particular religion believes that it is morally
right to kill those who do not share its beliefs, do the many who hold that
belief make it right? Where is the objectivity? The question again comes back
to this: Is it true and if it is, where is our guarantee that it is not just
subjective to an individual or even to an aggregation of individuals?
There is one entity
which alone can guarantee the objectivity of truth--the Church. Uncomfortable
as this may be to hear, all salvation comes from Christ through the Church
which is His Body (CCC 846). Thus, the Church is mission, the Church is
evangelisation because, despite her failing members, she alone possesses the
pledge and promise of the Holy Spirit. Contrary to conventional wisdom,
obedience to the Church does not endanger individual freedom. Instead, it
enlarges individual freedom so that it is no longer slave to individual
selfishness but serves the common good.
Jesus came to liberate
us so that in freedom we may pursue the good of heaven. But, if freedom were
just restricted to claiming what is accrued to me, the individual, then the
Church mission ceases to make sense. The conflicts between the so-called
“liberals” and “conservatives” are mainly attempts to define “tribal” freedom.
Furthermore, if we observe both post-Christian Europe and the post-truth
America, they both share one common goal and that is, the creation of greater
happiness through 1) the tolerance of religious freedom, 2) efficiency in
governance and transportation and 3) education through arts and sciences. But,
they have forgotten that earthly contentment as a goal and a common good is
merely a foretaste of the beatific vision—a vision made possible through the
Church's evangelising mission, which is to proclaim the Gospel of salvation and
not just “individual” freedom, good as it may be for human flourishing.
Pentecost is a reminder
that the visible mission of Jesus Christ is now continued by the invisible
mission of the Holy Spirit through the Church. If we are serious about
eternity, then it is to this Church that we must closely cleave to. Aptly, in
describing the unity of the Church, St Cyprian reminds us that, one cannot have
God as Father without having the Church as mother. Holy Mother Church is the
only institution animated by the Spirit who guarantees that she will always remain
the Sacrament of Salvation and that the freedom we seek is to fully embrace the
gift of salvation for the life of the world to come.
[1] I purposely
include the clause “except the gullible” because there is a dictatorial “wisdom”
that condemns anyone who dares to stand apart from it. Liberalism likes to present
itself as champion of the rights of the minority against “customs, prejudices, superstitions
and taboos”, but in itself, it is also tyrannical when it comes to enforcing
its dictates. A good example of this is political correctness which sets the
boundaries of acceptable speech and opinion. Anyone who does not subscribe to
this ideology will be labelled a bigot, a hater, a racist or definitely a
“phobe” of some kind.
[2] The Holy Spirit is
supposedly unbounded. He is not even “bound to”, let alone “bound by” the
Church. Thus, unconventional behaviour in missiology will be canonised as
maverick creativity whilst obedience will be demonised as confounding the work
of the Holy Spirit. In other words, the Magisterium, the hierarchy and the
Tradition are often portrayed as the “enemies” of the Holy Spirit.
[3] Anything
which smacks of “establishment” cannot be trusted to be truthful.
[4] There is perhaps
an anthropomorphic transference whereby our fallibility is transferred to the
Holy Spirit. Gender ideology takes a position against the anthropomorphic
association of God with gender and yet here we are, transposing our human
weakness unto the Holy Spirit.
