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Second Sunday
after Pentecost
Thoughts for the Week - Fr. R. Taouk
22nd June 2014
St. Bernard on The Operation of the Holy Ghost in Us
The Holy Ghost works a twofold operation in us, one by which
he inwardly strengthens the virtues that lead us to
salvation, the other by which he outwardly endows us with
serviceable gifts. The former is of benefit to ourselves,
the latter to our neighbours. For example, faith, hope and
charity are given to us for our own sake, without them we
cannot be saved. But the gift of wise and learned speech,
the power to heal, to prophesy, and endowments of this kind
without which we can fully achieve our own salvation, are
undoubtedly meant to be used for our neighbour's salvation.
At
this point we need to be warned not to give away what we
have received for our own welfare, nor to retain for
ourselves what must be expended for others. For example, you
keep for yourself what belongs to your neighbour, if along
with your full endowment of interior virtues you are also
adorned with the external gifts of knowledge and eloquence,
and, through fear or sloth or ill-judged humility, smother
this gift of speech that could be of help to so many, in a
useless and even pernicious silence. On the other hand, you
squander and lose what is meant to be your own if, before
you are totally permeated by the infusion of the Holy
Spirit, you rashly proceed to pour out your unfulfilled self
upon others. You deprive yourself of the life and salvation
which you impart to another if, lacking right intention and
inspired by self you become infected with the poison of
worldly ambition that swells into a deadly ulcer and
destroys you.
The man who is wise, therefore, will see his life as more
like a reservoir than a canal. The canal simultaneously
pours out what it receives; the reservoir retains the water
till it is filled, then discharges the overflow without loss
to itself. Today there are many in the Church who act like
canals, the reservoirs are far too rare. So urgent is the
charity of those through whom the streams of heavenly
doctrine flow to us, that they want to pour it forth before
they have been filled; they are more ready to speak than to
listen, impatient to teach what they have not grasped, and
full of presumption to govern others while they know not how
to govern themselves.
But you, my brother, your salvation is not yet assured; your
charity as yet is either non-existent or so meagre and reed-like that it bends with every breeze, puts its trust in
every spirit, and is carried along by every wind of
doctrine; or it is so great that you transcend the limits of
the commandment by loving your neighbour more than yourself,
or yet again so unsound that, contrary to the commandment,
it bows to flattery, flinches under fear, is upset by
sadness, shrivelled by avarice, entangled by ambition,
disquieted by suspicions, tormented by insults, exhausted by
anxieties, puffed up by honours, consumed by envy. If you
discover this chaos in your own interior, what madness
drives you to insinuate yourself into other people's
business. See how precious the graces that must first be
infused, so that when we venture to pour them out we may
dispense them from a spirit that is filled rather than
impoverished. We need first of all compunction of heart,
then fervour of spirit; thirdly, the labour of penance;
fourthly, works of charity; fifthly, zeal for prayer;
sixthly, leisure for contemplation; seventhly, love in all
its fullness.
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