And Elias, the prophet, stood up, as a fire, and his word burnt like a torch (Ecclesiasticus. 48.1, DRV)

Sunday, May 6, 2012

The Great Promise

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JMJ

Fourth Sunday after Easter

Since last Sunday, the Church has been preparing us for the Ascension of the Lord. Today, taking up the subject again, she goes a step further. Now she mentions the gift of God: the Holy Ghost - and His coming.

​It is expedient to you that I go, for if I go not, the Paraclete will not come to you ​(Jn. 16.7).

The Apostles were about to loose the sensible, physical presence of their beloved Risen Lord and Master (cf., "The Divine Farewell"). However, the Risen Christ would not leave them orphans and would continue to help them invisibly by His Spirit, Who would take up His work with them. The Lord Jesus did His work in  a visible manner in their midst; the Holy Ghost would do His in a secret, hidden way, but in one no less efficacious and real. Such is the way that leads to the height of Christian perfection: not by our human sensibilities and reckoning which calculate a greater degree of comfort and consolation and, but by the "dark", hidden and mysterious ways of the Spirit designed for our spiritual 'purgation' or purification which is indispensable for our more perfect intimacy with God. If the soul is convinced of this, it will remain, even in difficulties and in the most trying ones, and, if it neither understands nor sees its path, it will trust in the divine Paraclete, Who sees and knows well the goal to which He is leading it. The sensual man perceiveth not [the] things that are of ... God; for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand, because it is spiritually examined. But the spiritual man judgeth all things; and he himself is judged of no man ​(1 Cor. 2.14-15). 

The hearts of the Apostles could not comprehend what has happened to their Lord and Master and what is to happen still now that He is bidding them farewell because they are still dulled by sin. It was necessary that their Beloved Friend and Master, by dying on the Cross, destroy sin - the great obstacle to the action of the Holy Ghost - and then, when He had ascended into heaven, He would send the divine Paraclete Whom He merited for them and for us - after that man chose to listen to the deceitful and filthy infernal spirit - by His Passion. Therefore, theology teaches that the sending of the Holy Ghost to our souls is the principal fruit of the Passion of Our Lord.

Since sin is the greatest obstacle to the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, our preparation for the reception of this highest Gift Divine must consist then in a very special purity of conscience. Sin must be destroyed in us, not only in its actual manifestations, even though they are slight, but also in its deepest and most hidden roots (cf., "passive purification" in "Christian Love: Love of the Cross").


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Salvation is in the "Blood of the Lamb"

Apocalypse XIV now unfolding (cf., our posts "The Wine of the Wrath of God" and "After Pope Benedict XVI, the 'Last' Roman Pontiff?"). The divine chastisement of world-wide conflagration (Lk. 17.29-30, cf., our post "Our Lady, Vatican II Disorientation, and the Annihilation of Many Nations") to annihilate the 'super-power' and cities and nations drunk with the wine of its immodesty, impurity, fornication, homosexuality, and blasphemies (Apoc. 14.8) is imminent - the close of our end-times period (distinct from the consummation of the world, Mt. 28.20).

They... have made them white in the Blood of the Lamb
(Apoc. 7.14) ... All things... are cleansed with Blood: and without shedding of Blood there is no remission (Heb. 9.22).

The Blood of the [Divine] Lamb can be availed of in the traditional Rite of the Sacrament of Penance (cf., our post "On Concealing Sins in Confession") and of the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist (the Traditional Latin Mass). Go to our traditional Catholic Mass Centers (links on the left-side bar of this site). Flee to the mountains... (Mt. 24.16).

See also the Messages and Appeals (on the upper right-side bar) of the Apocalyptic Woman in her title of Our Lady of Fatima.