How Pentecost confirmed Mary’s mission as Mother of the Church
Christ’s prayer 'won' the Holy Ghost for the Church—and made Our Lady the Mother of all Christians.
Christ’s prayer 'won' the Holy Ghost for the Church—and made Our Lady the Mother of all Christians.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How Christ’s prayer for the Paraclete was the fruit of His Passion and the pledge of His love.
That Mary’s singular grace made her the most fitting vessel for the Holy Ghost and the Church’s maternal heart.
Why the visible signs of Pentecost revealed an invisible fire that burned most deeply in Mary’s soul.
He shows us that the Descent of the Holy Ghost crowned not only the Church’s birth, but Mary’s hidden mission to souls.
Mary at the Day of Pentecost
Mother of the Church: Mary in the First Apostolic Age
Book I, Chapter III
Burns and Oates, 1886.
How Pentecost confirmed Mary’s mission as Mother of the Church
How St Peter’s Pentecost sermon revealed the Church’s mission
Mary and Converts: How Our Lady shaped the first Christians after Pentecost
The prayer of our Lord for the Gift of the Holy Ghost
Our Blessed Lord speaks,1 in the discourse after the Last Supper, of His asking the Father that He would send the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, as well of His own sending the same Divine Person.
Our theology teaches us that the Mission of the Holy Ghost was a joint act both of the Father and of the Son. The meaning of the language of our Lord as to asking the Father seems to be that He had purchased by His merits in His Human Nature the great boon of the Mission of the Holy Ghost, which was in this respect unlike His own Mission as the Son of God in His Incarnation.
There had not been, and there could not have been, in the Incarnation, any merit preceding, by virtue of which it might have been won from God. Whereas, in the case of the Mission of the Holy Ghost, our Lord’s own merits had preceded and furnished a title by which that Mission might be granted, not out of simple mercy and compassion alone, but also as an act of justice.
And when our Lord mentions that He will ask the Father, He refers to a solemn act by which in His Sacred Humanity He begged this grace of the Father, by virtue of the merits of His Life and Passion.
This solemn act must have taken place in Heaven during the ten days which intervened between the Ascension and the fulfilment of the days of Pentecost, and we cannot doubt that the Blessed Mother was allowed to be aware of this petition of her Divine Son, and enabled also to accompany it, in her own way and measure, by the most fervent prayer and supplication.
She may also have known when the appointed time was come for the Descent of the Holy Ghost, and indeed it seems to have been known, by some Divine instinct, to the little body of the faithful that Something great was about to happen, when they assembled themselves as of one accord on the Day of Pentecost.
The gift internal and external
The great boon of this new presence of the Holy Ghost, with His gifts and fruits and the powers which were thereby conveyed to the souls of the faithful in various degrees, according to the capacity and merits of each, was internal.
It might have been communicated, as His gifts are now communicated, without any exterior manifestation by which the Divine action might be recognized. But it was not so to be in the dispensation of the Incarnation.
At our Lord’s own Baptism, and on the occasion of the Transfiguration, there had been some external sign by which the descent of the Holy Ghost upon Him had been made known to St. John and to the three disciples on the holy mountain.
And there may have been many Divine reasons why something of the same kind should accompany the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Visible Church of God on those great occasions. He usually acts silently and imperceptibly, but it was well that there should be something now to mark His presence, in harmony with the general economy of the Incarnation, and that this should contain a sign which might instruct men as to the purpose for which this presence of His was now vouchsafed.
All these conditions are found in the circumstances of His descent on the Church on the Day of Pentecost.
The sound as of, “a mighty wind coming” must have been heard in the city by others as well as by the Apostles and their companions, and must have been the means of bringing to the spot the crowd which was immediately addressed by St. Peter.
The tongues of fire were significant as pointing out the individual and personal character of the gifts now bestowed, which could not have been gathered so well from the sign of the rushing wind. The tongues also signified the purpose of the presence of the Holy Ghost in the members of the Church, as it is said in the Pentecostal hymn:
Linguis ut essent proflui,
Et caritate fervidi—
that they were to be animated by the most fervent charity, and that they were to communicate the truths which they had to deliver to the world by means of speech.
Faith was to be the condition of salvation, and faith was to come by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.
Our Lady at Pentecost
Christian art has always delighted to paint the Blessed Mother of God in the midst of the Apostles on the Day of Pentecost, and there can be no doubt that this pious instinct represents both the truth of the fact and the tradition of the Church.
Although she could have no part in the preaching of the Word of God, Mary was to receive on this great occasion a measure of the blessing now accorded to the Church, which was altogether singular and unique.
For the presence of the Holy Ghost was conferred on the hearts and souls of the faithful there assembled, in proportion to the fitness of each for the reception of greater or lesser measures of grace, and in this sense the words of our Lord came true on this occasion, that ‘‘to him that hath shall be given, and he shall have more abundantly.”
According to this tule, the share of our Blessed Lady would be far greater than the shares of all the rest together in the increase of sanctifying grace.
Effects of interior grace
The Church believes that at this time the Apostles were confirmed in grace, as well as filled with the gifts and powers of the Holy Ghost, whether in order to their own sanctification, or to the discharge of their great office to souls, in proportion to the immense graces which they had already received from the free bounty of God, and on account of their own faithful cooperation.
Our Lady was confirmed in grace, as it is natural to think, long before this moment, and her graces of the order of sanctification were in proportion to nothing less than the dignity of the Mother of God and the close companion of our Lord throughout the whole of His Life, as well as to her cooperation, which had been proceeding without any rest or pause from the first moment of her sanctification at the time of her Immaculate Conception.
Moreover, if we consider as certain that she was left on earth for the particular purpose of assisting the Church in those first beginnings, in some specially powerful manner, as its Mother, in fulfilment of the word which had been spoken to her from the Cross by her Divine Son, it is clear that we must also suppose as certain that, in accordance with the ordinary rule of the action of God in such cases, Mary was endowed with special graces for the perfect execution of the office which that word conferred upon her.
The office of Our Lady
This office in many respects passed beyond that which she had always exercised as the most faithful disciple and scholar of our Lord, and as, His constant assistant in the course of His Public Life.
If the Apostles were the Fathers of the Church, as St. Paul speaks of himself in relation to his converts, our Lady was the Mother of all the faithful.
The mother’s office has not the authority of the father. It is an office of influence and affection, although it involves duties both on the mother’s side and on the children’s side.
But it has a very wide range indeed, and a character of its own, a character of immense charity, of endless watchfulness, of the most tender and self-sacrificing care, of indulgence, and sympathy, of an instinctive sense of whatever is dangerous or helpful to the children, and of boundless compassion for their weaknesses, and even for their failings, and mistakes, and misfortunes.
When the child is in trouble, the mother does not think of the faults by which the misery has been incurred, but of the misery itself. She leaves the question of justice to the father, or rather she pleads with all her power in bar of the strictest justice.
Her zeal for souls
Again, our Blessed Lady never lost the impression of Calvary, not only in her tender sense of the enormous sufferings of our Lord, but in the new and deep penetration with which it armed her as to the value of the souls for which so great a price had been paid, and in her most burning zeal for the secure and efficient application to them of the full merits of the Precious Blood.
The effect, on the saints of God, of the constant contemplation of the Passion, is not only the deepest contrition and compassion, but the most intense charity.
This truth must never be forgotten in our considerations as to our Blessed Lady after the Passion, which wrought a far greater increase of yearning for the salvation and perfection of souls in her, than it could work in all the saints together.
Now that she was left on earth, as we have said, especially for the sake of the souls whom her presence might help in so many wonderful ways, now that her heart was all aflame for the execution of her commission, and now that the great gift was sent from Heaven which was to fit the members of the Church for their various duties in the great work of the Gospel, it is natural to think that Mary must have received some very magnificent dower of the graces of the Holy Ghost to enable her to discharge her own tender and noble work.
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Mary at the Day of Pentecost
How Pentecost confirmed Mary’s mission as Mother of the Church
How St Peter’s Pentecost sermon revealed the Church’s mission
Mary and Converts: How Our Lady shaped the first Christians after Pentecost
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St. John xiv. 16