How the Holy Ghost makes us grow into the ‘fulness of Christ’
The Church's goal is have us know, love and serve God. The Holy Ghost alone makes that possible.
The Church's goal is have us know, love and serve God. The Holy Ghost alone makes that possible.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How the Paraclete fills the Church with ever-growing knowledge of Christ’s Person and work.
That the Holy Ghost's mission is to make known what was once veiled—even to the Apostles.
Why the doctrine of the Holy Ghost, once reserved, was revealed fully only in Christ’s final hour.
He shows us that the Holy Ghost glorifies Christ by illuminating his fullness in the hearts of the faithful.
The Holy Ghost and Our Lord
Passiontide, Part III, Chapter V
Chapter VI
St. John xvi. 12-15, Story of the Gospels, § 156
Burns and Oates, London, 1886
Fourth Sunday after Easter
The Apostles’ knowledge of our Lord
We have a very precious, though disjointed and disconnected mass of teaching in those beautiful passages in the writings of St. Paul and other Apostles, which are contained in those parts of the Epistles, sometimes a considerable part of the whole, in which they leave the doctrinal or occasional topics which have been the main causes for their writing, and turn themselves to practical instructions in daily duties.
All students of the New Testament will know the peculiar charm and sweetness of these parts of the Apostolic writings, which seem to have a fragrance of their own, like that of the Sermon on the Mount, and of other parts of our Lord’s own teaching. It seems likely that we have here the reflection of that kind of teaching of which our Lord may be speaking, when He says of the Paraclete that ‘He shall receive of Mine, and shall show it to you.’
Not that it is not true or most important, that the Holy Ghost has the whole Divine substance and Nature from the Son with the Father, but that it may not have been our Lord’s purpose to set forth that truth in the words on which we are commenting, which evidently relate to something which the Paraclete communicates to the Apostles, and they to the Church, for the purpose of the glorification of our Lord.
Our Lord’s words
The words of the passage before us would apply equally to all that knowledge of our Lord, of which St. Paul so constantly speaks as the great matter in which he is constantly praying that the faithful may be ever advancing, by a growth that knows no limit, or at least that can never increase enough to satisfy his desire for them.
The Apostle says that he prays that ‘we may in all things grow up in Him Who is the head, even Christ,’ and just before, that we ‘may meet into the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ.’ He speaks of our Lord’s perfect character as a sort of norm to which all are meant ultimately to attain, or to which all were by their constant efforts to strive to attain. Thus, in the desires of the Apostle, there was one normal standard of perfection of grace and intelligence in spiritual things which was to be the object of ambition to all, what he calls the ‘measure of the age of the fulness of Christ,’ and to the attainment of this standard they were all to be continually pressing on.
He sometimes calls it the fulness of the knowledge of Christ, or of the Son of God, as if the growth which he desires to see was of the knowledge of our Lord. It was, as it appears, the office of the Paraclete, in a thousand different ways, to pour in and foster this knowledge of Him in the hearts and minds of the faithful, and it may fairly be considered that no office was dearer to Him, or more important in itself, and again that we have the fulfilment of the same office in the wonderful knowledge concerning Him of which the apostolical Christians were so full.
Our Lord’s words
This perhaps may help also to the explanation of what our Lord says in the same context with the words immediately before us of the Holy Ghost, ‘He shall receive of Mine and shall show it to you,’ of which He gives the explanation that all that is the Father’s is His. We have already said something on these words, and may here add something more in connection with what we have been lately saying.
It may be remembered, then, that there is extremely little mention of the Holy Ghost in the earlier Gospels, and that our Lord Himself does not speak of Him except rarely. The mentions made of Him are enough to prove that this was not from any imperfect appreciation of His dignity and majesty, for which the manner in which He is spoken of by the Angel at the Annunciation is sufficient.
But if that is true which we have more than once had to say—namely, that the doctrine concerning the Third Blessed Person was not fully possessed by the mass of the sacred people of God in the days in which our Lord came, it is only a part of the same truth that the mention of the Holy Ghost should be comparatively reserved, even to those who were the people ordinarily instructed by our Lord.
Growth in the revelation concerning the Holy Ghost
We find a kind of growth in this respect from the earlier parts of our Lord’s teaching up to the later, and it is natural that that teaching should become more explicit and fuller in these later chapters of the Gospel of St. John on which we are now engaged.
We can remember the much earlier passage in St. Matthew, in which, after mentioning the occasion on which our Lord is said by Him to have rejoiced in spirit and given thanks to His Father, He used the words:
‘All things are delivered to Me by My Father, and no man knoweth the Son but the Father, neither doth any man know the Father but the Son, and he to whom it shall please the Son to reveal Him.’1
Here some might be inclined to say that some mention of the Holy Ghost is required. But it might not have suited our Lord at that time to have introduced it. In the same way, when our Lord said, about a year before this date, ‘No man can come to Me except the Father, Who hath sent Me, draw him… Every one that hath heard of the Father, and hath learned, cometh to Me,’2 in those words there is no mention made of the Third Divine Person, Who nevertheless cannot be excluded from any knowledge that is attributed to the Father or the Son.
But the coming of the Holy Ghost was the great feature, if we may so speak, in the dealings of God with His creatures which was to follow on the Sacrifice of our Lord in His Passion, and it is natural that our Lord should now begin to multiply His instructions to the Apostles concerning Him, and especially to bring out more clearly to their minds how large a part He was to take in the manifestation of Himself, the Incarnate Son, by Whom He was to be sent.
No longer to be kept back
We may, therefore, consider that passages such as that before us may be thought to be silent intimations to the Apostles that the doctrine concerning the Holy Ghost was no longer to be taught reservedly as before, and that it was on account of the reserve hitherto maintained that some things which were true concerning Him had not been explicitly mentioned.
Our Lord was now engaged in preparing the Apostles for the coming of the Holy Ghost in place of Himself, and it was His object to enhance their notions of the immense blessing they were to receive in this new Presence with them of the Third Divine Person by every word that He said.
The knowledge they had received concerning their Master had been the work, as He had told them, of the Father Himself, not without His own co-operation. Now He tells them the Holy Ghost will take of His, and show it to them, and that all things that are the Father’s are His.
The knowledge concerning our Lord brought into the world by the glorification of His name, belonged to the Father and to Himself, and now He insists on the truth which had not before been so much proclaimed, that it was brought home to them by the Holy Ghost.
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The Holy Ghost and Our Lord
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St. Matt. xi. 27.
St. John vi. 44, 45.