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Living The Faith -
Beliefs
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Lesson 9: ON THE HOLY GHOST AND HIS DESCENT UPON THE APOSTLES
94. Q. Who is the Holy Ghost?
A. The Holy Ghost is the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity.
95. Q. From whom does the Holy Ghost proceed?
A. The Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son.
96. Q. Is the Holy Ghost equal to the Father and the Son?
A. The Holy Ghost is equal to the Father and the Son, being the same Lord and God as they are.
97. Q. On what day did the Holy Ghost come down upon the Apostles?
A. The Holy Ghost came down upon the Apostles ten days after the Ascension of Our Lord; and the day on which He came down upon the Apostles is called Whit-Sunday or Pentecost.
We have seen already that the Apostles fled and were very much
afraid when Our Lord was taken prisoner. Even Peter, the chief of the
Apostles, who said he would die rather than leave Our Lord, shamefully
denied Him; and St. John, the beloved disciple, stood near the Cross,
but offered no resistance to Our Lord's enemies. After the Crucifixion
of Our Lord, the Apostles, afraid of being put to death, shut
themselves up in a room. Ten days after Our Lord's Ascension they were
praying as usual in their room, when suddenly they heard the sound as
it were of a great wind, and then they saw tongues the shape of our
own, but all on fire, coming, and one tongue resting on the head of
each Apostle present. (Acts 2).
This was the Holy Ghost coming
to them. The Holy Ghost, being a pure spirit without a body, can take
any form He pleases. He sometimes came in the form of a dove; so when
you see a dove painted in a church near the altar, it is there to
represent the Holy Ghost. You could not paint a spirit, so angels and
God Himself are generally represented in pictures as they at some time
appeared to men.
"Whit-Sunday," or White-Sunday; probably so
called because in the early ages of the Church converts were baptized
on the day before, and after their Baptism wore white robes or garments
as a mark of the soul's purity after Baptism.
"Pentecost" means
the fiftieth day, because the feast comes fifty days after the
resurrection of Our Lord. After His resurrection He remained forty days
upon earth, and ten days after He ascended into Heaven the Holy Ghost
came, thus making the fifty days.
After the Holy Ghost came down
upon the Apostles they were no longer timid men. They went forth boldly
into the streets and preached Christ crucified, telling the people how
the Son of God -- the true Messias promised -- had been put to death.
Many who heard them believed and were baptized. The first time St.
Peter preached to the people three thousand were converted (Acts 2:41);
so that when all the Apostles preached the number of Christians
increased rapidly, and the Christian religion was soon carried to
distant parts of the world.
At the time Our Lord was put to
death the Jews were celebrating a great feast in Jerusalem. The Jews
were not like us in this respect. We have many churches, and in all of
them sacrifice, that is, the Holy Mass, is offered. The Jews had only
one temple where sacrifice could be offered, and that was in Jerusalem.
They had synagogues or meeting houses throughout the land in which they
assembled to pray and hear the Holy Scriptures read; but they could not
offer sacrifice in them. Three times a year they went to Jerusalem to
celebrate their great feasts. One of these feasts was called the Pasch,
or Passover, and it was during the celebration of that feast that Our
Lord was put to death; so that there were many persons from all parts
of the nation present at the sad execution. I must now tell you why
they celebrated the Pasch. We generally celebrate a feast to
commemorate -- to remind us of -- some great event; and the Jews
celebrated this feast to remind them of their deliverance from the
slavery of the Egyptians, in which their ancestors had been suffering
for about two hundred years. At the end of that time God sent Moses to
deliver them. You should know, then, who Moses was and what he did to
deliver his people, and you should know also something of the history
of his people -- the Israelites -- and how they came to be in Egypt.
At
the time I am now going to speak of the old patriarch Jacob, Abraham's
grandson, had eleven sons -- for Benjamin, the twelfth son, was born
afterwards -- and the youngest was called Joseph. Joseph was the
favorite of his father, and his brothers were jealous of him. The
brothers were shepherds, and used to take their flocks to feed at a
great distance from home, and did not return for a long time. One day
the father sent Joseph to his brothers to see if all were well. They
hated Joseph because his father loved him best; and when they saw him
coming they agreed never to let him return to his father. (Gen. 37).
They intended to kill him. While they were debating about how they
should put him to death -- he was then only sixteen years old -- some
merchants passed on their way to Egypt; so, instead of killing him,
they sold him as a slave to the merchants. Then they took Joseph's coat
and dipped it in the blood of a kid, and sent it to their poor old
father, saying they had found it, and making him believe that some wild
beast on the way had eaten Joseph. When the merchants arrived in Egypt,
Potiphar, one of the king's officers, bought Joseph, and brought him as
a slave to his own house. While there, Joseph was falsely accused of a
great crime, and cast into prison. While Joseph was in prison the king
had a dream. (Gen. 41). He saw in the dream seven fat cows coming up
out of a river, followed by seven lean cows; and the lean cows ate up
the fat cows. He saw also seven fat ears of corn and seven lean ears of
corn; and the seven lean ears ate up the seven fat ears. The king was
very much troubled, and called together all his wise men to tell him
what the dream meant, but they could not. Then the king heard of
Joseph, and sent for him. Now Joseph was a very good young man, and God
showed him the meaning; so he told the king that the seven fat ears of
corn and the seven fat cows meant seven years of great abundance in
Egypt, and that the seven lean ears and the seven lean cows meant seven
years of famine that would follow, and all the abundance of the
previous seven years would be consumed. So he advised the king to build
great barns during the years of plenty, and gather up all the corn
everywhere to save it for the years of famine. The king was delighted
at Joseph's wisdom, and made him after himself the most powerful in the
kingdom, giving him charge of everything, so that Joseph himself might
do what he had advised. Now it happened years after this that there was
a famine in the country where Joseph's father lived, and he sent all
his sons down into Egypt to buy corn. (Gen. 42). They did not know
their brother Joseph, but he knew them; and after forgiving them for
what they had done to him, he sent them home with an abundance of corn.
Afterwards Joseph's father and brothers left their own country and came
to live near Joseph in Egypt. The king gave them good land (Gen. 47),
and they lived there in peace and happiness. Learn from this beautiful
history of Joseph how God protects those that love and serve Him no
matter where they are or in what danger they may be placed; and how He
even turns the evil deeds of their enemies into blessings for them.
After
the death of Joseph and his brothers, their descendants became very
numerous, and the new king of the Egyptians began to persecute them.
(Ex. 2). He imposed upon them the hardest works, and treated them most
cruelly. He ordered that all their male infants should, as soon as
born, be thrown into the River Nile. Now about that time Moses was
born. (Ex. 2). His mother did not obey the king's order, but hid him
for about three months. When she could conceal him no longer she made a
little cradle of rushes, and covering it over with pitch or tar to keep
out the water, placed him in it, and then laid it in the tall grass by
the edge of the river, sending his little sister to watch what would
become of him. Just then the king's daughter came down to bathe, and
seeing the little child, ordered one of her servants to bring him to
her. At that moment Moses' little sister, pretending not to know him,
ran up and asked the king's daughter if she wished to procure a nurse
for him. The king's daughter replied in the affirmative and permitted
her to bring one; so Moses' own mother was brought and engaged to be
his nurse: but he was not known as her son, but as the adopted son of
the king's daughter. When Moses grew up he was an officer in the king's
army; but because he took the part of his persecuted countrymen he
offended the king, and had to fly from the palace. He then went into
another country and became a shepherd.
During all this time the
persecuted Israelites were praying to the true God to be delivered from
the slavery of the Egyptians, who were idolaters. One day Moses saw a
bush burning; and as he came near to look at it, he heard a voice
telling him not to come too near, and bidding him take off his shoes,
for he was on holy ground. (Ex. 3). It was God who thus appeared and
spoke to him, and He ordered him to take off his shoes as a mark of
respect and reverence. When we want to show our respect for any person
or place, we take off our hats; but the people of that country, instead
of their hats, took off their shoes. It was the custom of the country
and did not seem strange to them.
Then God told Moses that He
was going to send him to deliver His people from the Egyptians and lead
them back to their own country; and He sent Aaron, the brother of
Moses, with him. Then Moses said to God, the king of Egypt will not let
the people go, and what can I do? God gave Moses two signs or miracles
to show the king, so that he could know that Moses was really sent by
Him. He gave him power to change a rod into a serpent, and back again
into a rod; power also to bring a disease instantly upon his hand, and
to heal it instantly. (Ex. 4). Do these, said Almighty God, in the
presence of the king. Then Moses and Aaron went to the king and did as
God commanded them; and when the rod of Aaron became a serpent, the
king's magicians -- that is, men who do apparently wonderful things by
sleight of hand or the power of the devil -- cast their rods upon the
ground, and they also became serpents -- not that their rods were
changed into serpents, but the devil, who was helping them, took away
instantly their rods and put real serpents in their place -- but
Aaron's serpent swallowed them up. (Ex. 7). After these signs the king
would not let the people go with Moses; for God permitted the king's
heart to be hardened, so that all the Egyptians might see the great
work God was going to do for His people.
Then God sent the ten plagues upon the Egyptians, while the Israelites -- God's people -- suffered nothing from these plagues.
The
first plague was blood. All the water in the land was converted into
blood. (Ex. 7). The king then sent for Moses and promised that if he
would take away the plague he would allow all the people to depart.
Moses prayed to God, and the plague was removed. But after it was taken
away the king's heart was hardened again and he would not keep his
promise. Just as people in sickness, distress, or danger sometimes
promise God they will lead better lives if only He will help them, and
when they are saved they do not keep their promises, so did Pharaoh;
and therefore God sent another plague. The second plague was frogs.
Great numbers of them came out of the rivers and lakes, and filled all
the houses of the Egyptians, and crawled into their food, beds, etc.
Again the king sent for Moses and did as before; and again Moses
prayed, and all the frogs went back into the waters or died. (Ex. 8).
But the king again hardened his heart and did not keep his promise. The
third plague was sciniphs (Ex. 8) -- very small flies, that filled the
land. Imagine our country filled with mosquitoes so numerous that you
could scarcely walk through them; it would be a dreadful plague. As it
is, two or three might cause you considerable annoyance, and pain: what
then if there were millions doubly venomous, because sent to punish
you? So these little flies must have greatly punished the Egyptians.
The fourth plague was flies that filled the land and covered
everything, to the great disgust of the people. The fifth plague was
murrain -- a disease that broke out among the cattle. The sixth plague
was a disease -- boils -- that broke out on men and beasts, so that
scarcely anyone could move on account of the pains and suffering. The
seventh plague was hail, that fell in large pieces and destroyed all
their crops. The eighth plague was locusts. These are very destructive
little animals. They look something like our grasshoppers, but are
about two or three times their size. They fly and come in millions.
They come to this country in great numbers -- almost a plague -- every
fifteen or twenty-five years, and the farmers fear them very much. They
eat up every green blade or leaf, and thus destroy all the crops and
trees. When the locusts came upon Egypt, Moses, at the king's request,
prayed, and God sent a strong wind that swept them into the sea, where
they perished in the water. The ninth plague was a horrible darkness
for three days in all the land of Egypt. The tenth plague, the last,
was the most terrible of all -- the killing of the firstborn in all the
land of Egypt. (Ex. 12). God instructed Moses to tell the Israelites in
the land that on a certain night they were to take a lamb in each
family, kill it, and sprinkle its blood on the doorposts of their
houses. They were then to cook the lamb and eat it standing, with their
garments ready as for a journey. (Ex. 12). The lamb was called the
paschal lamb, and was, after that, to be eaten every year, at about
what is with us Easter-time, in commemoration of this event. That night
God sent an angel through all the land, and he killed the firstborn of
man and beast in all the houses of the Egyptians. That is, he killed
the eldest son in the house; and if the father was the firstborn in his
father's family, he was killed also; and the same for the beasts. This
was a terrible punishment. In the house of every Egyptian there were
some dead but not one in the houses of the Israelites; for when the
angel saw the blood of the lamb on the doorposts, he passed over and
did not enter into their houses, so that this event, called Passover or
Pasch, was kept always as a great feast by God's people. This paschal
lamb was a figure of our blessed Lord, for as its blood saved the
Israelites from death, so Our Lord's blood saved and still saves us
from eternal death in Hell.
After that dreadful night Pharaoh
allowed the people to depart with Moses; but when they had gone as far
as the Red Sea, he was sorry he let them go, and set out with a great
army to bring them back. There the people stood, with the sea before
them and Pharao and his army coming behind them; but God provided for
them a means of escape. At God's command, Moses stretched his rod over
the sea, and the waters divided and stood like great walls on either
side and all the people passed through the opening in the waters, on
the dry bed of the sea. (Ex. 14).
Pharao attempted to follow
them, but when he and his army were on the dry bed of the sea, between
the two walls of water, God allowed the waters to close over them, and
they were all drowned. Then the Israelites began the great journey
through the desert, in which they travelled for forty years. During all
that time God fed them with manna. He Himself, as a guide, went with
them in a cloud, that shaded them from the heat of the sun during the
day and was a light for them at night. But you will ask: Was the desert
so large that it took forty years to cross it? No, but these people,
notwithstanding all God had done for them, sinned against Him in the
desert; so He permitted them to wander about through it till a new
generation of people grew up, who were to be led into the promised land
by Josue, the successor of Moses. From this we may learn a lesson for
ourselves: God will always punish those who deserve it, even though He
loves them and may often have done great things to save them; but He
will wait for His own time to punish.
The Israelites then, as I
have said, went from every part of the land up to the Temple in
Jerusalem to celebrate the Pasch each year. It was during one of these
celebrations that Our Lord was put to death, and during another feast
that St. Peter preached to the people after Our Lord's death. He spoke
only in one language, and yet all his hearers understood, for each
heard his own language spoken. (Acts 2:6). This was called the gift of
tongues, and was given to the Apostles when the Holy Ghost came upon
them. For example, if each of you came from a different country and
understood the language only of the country from which you came, and I
gave the instructions only in English, then if everyone thought I was
speaking his language -- German, French, Spanish, Italian, etc -- and
understood me, I would have what is called the gift of tongues, and it
would be a great miracle, as it was when bestowed upon the Apostles.
In
the first ages of the Church God performed more miracles than He does
now, because they are not now so necessary. These miracles were
performed only to make the Church better known, and to prove that she
was the true Church, with her power and authority from God. That can
now be known and seen in Christian countries without miracles. These
special gifts, like the gift of tongues, were given also to some of the
early Christians by the Holy Ghost, when they received Confirmation;
but they were not a part of or necessary for Confirmation, but only to
show the power of the true religion. Those who heard St. Peter preach,
when they went back to their own countries told what they had seen and
heard, and thus their countrymen were prepared to receive the Gospel
when the Apostles came to preach it.
98. Q. How did the Holy Ghost come down upon the Apostles?
A. The Holy Ghost came down upon the Apostles in the form of tongues of fire.
99. Q. Who sent the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles?
A. Our Lord Jesus Christ sent the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles.
100. Q. Why did Christ send the Holy Ghost?
A.
Christ sent the Holy Ghost to sanctify His Church, to enlighten and
strengthen the Apostles, and to enable them to preach the Gospel.
"Sanctify,"
to make more holy by the grace which He would give to the members of
the Church. "To enlighten." The Apostles did not understand very well
everything Our Lord taught while He was with them; but after the Holy
Ghost came upon them they understood perfectly, and remembered many
things which Our Lord said to them, and understood the true meaning of
all. The prophets foretold that when the Messias, Christ, would come,
He would bring all the world under His power. The prophets meant in a
spiritual sense; but most of the people understood that He was to be a
great general, with powerful armies, who would subdue all the nations
of the earth, and bring them under the authority of the Jews. We know
they thought that the great kingdom He was to establish upon earth
would be a temporal kingdom, from many of their sayings and actions.
One day the mother of two of Our Lord's Apostles came to ask Him if,
when He had established His kingdom upon the earth, He would give her
sons honorable positions in it, and place them high in authority.
(Matt. 20:20). Our Lord told her she did not understand what she was
asking. This shows that even some of the Apostles -- much less the
people -- did not understand the full nature of Our Lord's mission upon
earth, nor of His kingdom, the Church. Often too, when He preached to
the people, the Apostles asked Him on His return what His sermon meant
(Luke 8:9). But after the Holy Ghost came, they were enlightened, and
understood all without difficulty. "Strengthen." I told you already
that before the Holy Ghost came they were timid and afraid of being
arrested, but that afterwards they went out boldly, and taught all they
had learned from Our Lord. They were often taken prisoners and
scourged, but it mattered not -- they were firm in their faith, and
could suffer anything for Christ after they had been enlightened and
strengthened by the Holy Ghost. Finally, they were all, with the
exception of St. John, put to death for their holy faith. St. Peter and
St. Paul were crucified at Rome about the year 65, that is, about
thirty-two years after the death of Our Lord. St. James was beheaded by
order of King Herod. St. John lived the longest, and was the only one
of the Apostles who was not put to death, though he was cast into a
large vessel of boiling oil, but was miraculously saved.
Certainly
by dying for their faith the Apostles showed that they were not
impostors or hypocrites. They must really have believed what they
taught, otherwise they would not have laid down their lives for it.
They were certain of what they taught, as we saw when speaking of St.
Thomas.
101. Q. Will the Holy Ghost abide with the Church forever?
A. The Holy Ghost will abide with the Church forever, and guide it in the way of holiness and truth.
"Abide" means to stay with us.
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