In
the company of the great Mother of God, and encouraged by Her, the twelve
Apostles and the rest of the disciples and faithful joyfully waited for the fulfilment
of the promise of the Saviour, that He would send them the Holy Ghost, the
Consoler. They were of one heart and soul in thought and action, because they
were united in prayer, in fasting and in the expectation of the Holy Ghost.
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| Holy Ghost descending from on high |
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The
Queen of the angels, most holy Mary, in the plenitude of her wisdom and grace,
knew the
time and predestined hour for the sending of the Holy Ghost upon the
apostolic college. When the days of Pentecost were about to be fulfilled (Act
2, 1), (which happened fifty days after the Resurrection of the Lord our
Redeemer), the most blessed Mother saw, how in heaven Jesus Christ (John 14,
26) conferred with the eternal Father concerning the promised sending of the
divine Paraclete to the Apostles, and that the time predetermined by his
infinite wisdom for planting the faith and all his gifts in his holy Church,
was at hand. The Lord also referred to the merits acquired by Him in the flesh
through his most holy Life, Passion and Death, to the mysteries wrought by Him
for the salvation of the human race and to the fact, that He was the Mediator,
Advocate and Intercessor between the eternal Father and men, and that among
them lived his sweetest Mother, in whom the divine Persons were so well
pleased.
He
besought his Father also, that, besides bringing grace and the invisible gifts,
the Holy Ghost should appear in the world in visible form, that so the
evangelical law might be honoured before all the world; that the Apostles and
faithful, who were to spread the divine truth, might be encouraged, and that
the enemies of the Lord, who had in this life persecuted and despised Him unto
the death of the Cross, might be filled with terror.
This
petition of our Redeemer in heaven was supported on earth by most holy Mary in
a manner befitting the merciful Mother of the faithful. Prostrate upon the
earth in the form of a cross and in profoundest humility, She saw, how in that
consistory of the blessed
Trinity, the request of the Saviour was favourably accepted, and how, to fulfil
and execute it, the persons of the Father and the Son, as the Principle from
which the Holy Ghost proceeded, decreed the active mission of the Holy Spirit;
for to these Two is attributed the sending of the third Person, because He
proceeds from Both; and the third Person passively took upon Himself this
mission and consented to come into the world. Although all the three divine
Persons and their operations spring from the same infinite and eternal will
without any inequality; yet the same powers, which in all the three Persons are
indivisible and equal, have certain operations in each Person, which are not in
the others and thus the understanding engenders in the Father, not in the Son,
who is engendered; and the will breathes forth in the Father and the Son, and
not in the Holy Ghost, who is breathed forth. On account of this reason the
Father and the Son, as the active Principle, are said to send the Holy Ghost,
while to the Latter the (Holy Spirit) is attributed the being sent, as if in a
passive manner.
