Tuesday, 2 December 2014

20140902 KNOWING THE DEPTHS OF GOD THROUGH THE SPIRIT AS THE SECRET TO THE AUTHORITY AND POWER OF OUR MINISTRY

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,
12 making known your mighty deeds to the children of Adam, the glory and majesty of your kingship.
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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