20140902 KNOWING THE DEPTHS OF GOD THROUGH THE SPIRIT AS THE
SECRET TO THE AUTHORITY AND POWER OF OUR MINISTRY
Reading 1, First Corinthians 2:10-16
10 to us, though, God has given revelation through the Spirit, for the Spirit explores the depths of everything, even the depths of
God.
11 After all, is there anyone who knows the qualities of
anyone except his own spirit, within him; and in the same way, nobody knows the
qualities of God except the Spirit of God.
12 Now, the Spirit we have received is not the spirit of the world but God's own Spirit, so that we may
understand the lavish gifts God has given us.
13 And these are what we speak of, not in the terms learnt
from human philosophy, but in terms learnt from the Spirit, fitting spiritual
language to spiritual things.
14 The natural person has no room for the gifts of God's Spirit; to him they are folly; he cannot
recognise them, because their value can be assessed only in the Spirit.
15 The spiritual person, on the other hand, can assess the
value of everything, and that person's value cannot be assessed by anybody
else.
16 For: who has ever known the mind of the Lord? Who has ever been his adviser? But we are
those who have the mind of Christ.
Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 145:8-9, 10-11, 12-13, 13-14
8 Yahweh is tenderness and pity, slow to anger, full of
faithful love.
9 Yahweh is generous to all, his tenderness embraces all
his creatures.
10 All your creatures shall thank you, Yahweh, and your
faithful shall bless you.
11 They shall speak of the glory of your kingship and tell of your might,
13 Your kingship is a kingship for ever, your reign lasts
from age to age. Yahweh is trustworthy in all his words, and upright in all his
deeds.
14 Yahweh supports all who stumble, lifts up those who are
bowed down.
Gospel, Luke 4:31-37
31 He went down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and
taught them on the Sabbath.
32 And his teaching made a deep impression on them because
his word carried authority.
33 In the synagogue there was a man possessed by the spirit of an unclean devil, and he shouted at the top of his
voice,
34 'Ha! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you
are: the Holy One of God.'
35 But Jesus rebuked it, saying, 'Be quiet! Come out of him!' And the
devil, throwing the man into the middle, went out of him without hurting him at
all.
36 Astonishment seized them and they were all saying to
one another, 'What is it in his words? He gives orders to unclean spirits with
authority and power and they come out.'
37 And the news of him travelled all through the surrounding
countryside.
KNOWING
THE DEPTHS OF GOD THROUGH THE SPIRIT AS THE SECRET TO THE AUTHORITY AND POWER
OF OUR MINISTRY
SCRIPTURE
READINGS: 1 COR 2:10-16; LK 4:31-37
http://www.universalis.com/20140902/mass.htm
Today’s scripture readings
cannot but also make us feel with the contemporaries of Jesus at the deep
impact His ministry had on His listeners. They were so
impressed at the teaching of Jesus because “he spoke with authority”.
This authority was not only confined to His preaching but also manifested in
His power to make the might and presence of God felt, so much so that even “the
spirit of an unclean devil” bowed down before Him. So unique was Jesus
that, like His contemporaries, we cannot but exclaim, “What teaching!” In
other words, “what is the meaning of all this?”
Indeed, for us who are His
collaborators in the vineyard of the Lord, whether in the Church or in the
world, we must surely ask “what is the meaning of all this” for our mission
as well. Certainly, we should be concerned as to how we can be more
effective in our apostolate. Certainly, we cannot but wonder why the
grace of baptism, confirmation, matrimony and Holy Orders have not empowered us
to be His effective apostles and missionaries in the world. Indeed, if
people do not see the power of God at work in us, it is because we have not
taught with authority or ministered with power. Consequently, we are no
better than the scribes and teachers during the time of Jesus. They too
did not make “a deep impression” on the people because they lacked that
authority and power.
Where then can we find
the source of authority and power for our apostolate? This is the question posed to us
in both texts of today’s scripture readings. The answer is obvious.
It does not come from human wisdom and philosophy. The gospel is not
simply human logic and human reasoning. Wasn’t this also the experience
of St Paul, for he said, “Therefore we teach, not in the way in which
philosophy is taught but in the way that the Spirit teaches us; we teach
spiritual things spiritually”
Or course, we cannot infer
from this that St Paul was denying or denigrating the importance of faith
formation in spirituality, doctrines and morals. St Paul by no means
was demeaning the necessity of human, intellectual and pastoral formation.
After all, if St Paul could speak so eloquently, it was partly because of
his educational background. He was given a good education from young and
was trained to be a rabbi. This simply means that grace presupposes
nature, grace perfects nature. Yet the real secret of the ministry,
whilst not excluding the need for such formation and growth, does not lie
here. For such formation only bestows upon us institutional and academic
authority and human competency, just as it did for the scribes and Pharisees,
but not personal authority and the spirit-filled power of the ministry.
The foundation of our
apostolate lies in the fact that we know the depths of God, as St Paul says. This is the key to true spiritual
authority and power. If the Scribes and Pharisees taught without
authority, it was because they did not know the depths of God. They only knew
about the depths of God. They had no personal experience of God and thus
they spoke from the authority of the Torah and the prophets, as they always
prefaced their teaching with “As it was said …”. Indeed, they had no personal
authority because they did not speak from their conviction. It is the
same for many of us too. Quite often we teach the truths of God merely by
relying on our knowledge of scripture and theology, but without real personal
authority as we lack a personal knowledge of the depths of God.
But what does it really
mean to know the depths of God? To know the depths of God firstly means to know the
mind of God. It is to know His will and plan for us, which we
describe as His economy of salvation. Unless we know the mystery of His
plan we cannot reveal to others that Christ is the mystery of God in person;
and that He is the revealer and fulfillment of God’s plan for the salvation of
humankind. Knowing the mind of God intimately therefore is the
precondition for imparting faith to others or leading others to God.
Indeed, St Paul challenged us by asking, “Who can know the mind of the Lord, so
who can teach him?” Truly, unless we have the mind of Christ, we cannot
lead others to Him since we do not even know Him ourselves.
Secondly to know the
depths of God is to know the heart of God. To know the heart of God is to recognize His
compassion, love and mercy for us. When we know the heart of God, then we
can speak with conviction the greatness and unfathomable depths of God’s love
for us; a love that is so unimaginable that He would even incarnate Himself in
Jesus. And as if this was not sufficient, He went to the extreme of
sharing our sufferings to the utmost limit by allowing His Son to be crucified
and die on the cross in a most ignominious manner. Only when we know the
heart of God can we be grateful for His unconditional and self-emptying love
for us. Unless, we can proclaim with the psalmist from the depths of our
being that “the Lord is kind and full of compassion, slow to anger, abounding
in love” and “how good is the Lord to all, compassionate to all his creatures”,
we cannot claim that we have come to experience the heart of God’s love for us.
Thirdly, to know the
depths of God is to know His power. This was the kind of knowledge that the psalmist had when
he prayed, “All your creatures … your friends … shall speak of the glory of
your reign and declare your might, O God, to make known to men your mighty
deeds and the glorious splendour of your reign.” Indeed, if Jesus were able to
cast out the evil spirits simply with a command, “Be quiet! Come out of him!”
and with such authority, it was because He believed absolutely in the power of
God. More than that, He even felt within Himself the power of God.
Hence when it came to His confrontation with evil, He issued the command to the
unclean spirit to come out of the man with authority. It must be noted
that Jesus was not making a request for the devil to come out of the man but it
was an order. What was more demonstrable of the power of God was that
“the devil, throwing the man down in front of everyone, went out of him without
hurting him at all.” Such is the power of God in the face of evil!
The early apostolic Church,
too, abounded with the gifts of the Spirit. Today, we too are given such
powers. We are given the gifts of the Holy Spirit for our ministry.
But unfortunately many of us are skeptical of the gifts that God has given
to us. Perhaps, deep in our hearts, we wonder whether God is powerful
enough to work miracles in our lives. Because we lack that personal
knowledge of the power of God, His power and gifts cannot operate in our lives
and in our ministry. For in the gifts of the Spirit, we experience and
manifest in us the power of God. If we really believe in the power of God
and in His authority over evil spirits, why, then, do we cringe in the face of
evil? That we are fearful simply shows that we doubt both the supremacy
of God and the power He has given to us over unclean spirits. Because if
we did, we would rely on His power to cast out all evil spirits in our
lives! What is said of exorcism or deliverance is also applicable with
regard to other miracles like healing miracles. Somehow, deep within us,
we are skeptical that God will work miracles in our lives simply because we do
not know His love and power; and so we pray without faith and rely only on our
human reasoning.
So if the secret to our
ministry is dependent on whether we know the depths of God, we must now ask how
we can be in touch with the depths of God. The answer is found in the
first reading. It is through the Spirit of God. St Paul tells us,
“The Spirit reaches the depths of everything, even the depths of God.
After all, the depths of a man can only be known by his own spirit, not by any
other man, and in the same way the depths of God can only be known by the
Spirit of God.” So only through the Spirit of God, can we come to know
the mind, the heart and the power of God. The Holy Spirit leads us to
Jesus. This was certainly the situation of Jesus. The gospel tells
us that even before Jesus came down to Capernaum to teach, He had been anointed
by the Spirit at His baptism, which then became operative in His battle with
the devils in the temptation in the desert. This was further confirmed and
reinforced in Nazareth when He read the passage from Isaiah regarding the
anointing of the Holy Spirit. Truly, if Jesus knew the depths of God, it
was because He himself was so filled with the Spirit, the Spirit of His
Father. From the Spirit, Jesus recognized His Sonship and the gifts that
the Holy Spirit had empowered Him with. As St Paul reiterates, “Now
instead of the spirit of the world, we have received the Spirit that comes from
God, to teach us to understand the gifts that he has given us.”
At the same time, St Paul
cautions us that getting connected with the Spirit of God is a personal matter.
That is why those who have come to know the depths of God and have experienced
Him personally, find great difficulty in trying to transmit their spiritual
experience and spiritual wisdom to those who have not experienced it for
themselves, since human words and knowledge can never comprehend the spiritual
realities. Such is the frustration that Paul felt when he said, “An unspiritual
person is one who does not accept anything of the Spirit of God; he sees it all
as nonsense; it is beyond the understanding because it can only be understood
by means of the Spirit.”
Realizing the need for the
Spirit of God in our lives and especially more so in our ministry, we should
pray for this personal experience of the Spirit of God in our lives.
Only in this way, can we know the depths of God and thus “judge the value of
everything,” without allowing “our values to be judged by other men”.
Truly, only then “in the way that the Spirit teaches; we teach spiritual things
spiritually.” Without this intimate contact with the Spirit and the
depths of God, we cannot preach with authority or minister with power or be
effective in our apostolate.
WRITTEN BY THE MOST REV WILLIAM GOH
ARCHBISHOP OF SINGAPORE
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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