The Spiritual Sense

style=width:233px;height:300px;float:right;" >I WAS UNABLE to write about Easter last month because of the important report on the Exposition of Saint Anthony’s relics, but Eastertide continues through May, and so this time I want to consider aspects of the Saint’s Eastertide sermons in the Sunday collection. Nowadays, the Mass readings for Eastertide are drawn from the Acts of the Apostles and (this year) from the Apocalypse (Revelation). In Anthony’s day, the ‘Epistle’ was taken from Acts on the second Sunday of Eastertide (Low Sunday) and the Apocalypse on the third and fourth Sundays.





Two contrasting books





We have here two contrasting books of the New Testament. On the one hand, Acts is Saint Luke’s sequel to his Gospel, the story of how the Church developed after the Resurrection, and especially how the Gospel began to be taken to the non-Jewish world. It is a work of history, sober and factual, even though it is written according to the style of historical writing of its own time. The Apocalypse, on the other hand, purports to be a ‘future history’ of the End-time, full of fantastic imagery and symbolism. Actually, scholars today are convinced that much of this is a coded representation of the situation in the writer’s own day, towards the end of the first century. There is much more historical information contained in it than might appear at first sight.



Anthony, of course, did not have access to the fruits of seven centuries of scholarship that came after him. But he did make use of the best scholarship that was then available, and would not have been disconcerted by modern advances. All the same, he was not too bothered about the literal or historical meaning of the text, the meaning accessible to a conscientious, but not necessarily believing, scholar. What he was concerned with was the ‘spiritual’ sense, the applicability of the Scripture to believers of every age, and which we attain through openness to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and of the Church.





The Church on Earth





In the course of his sermon for Low Sunday, Anthony refers to various incidents in Acts. For instance, after the Ascension the disciples returned to Jerusalem and persevered in prayer in the Upper Room, accompanied by Mary. What a wonderful image of the Church this is! We accept that the Lord is no longer visible to us as in the days of his earthly ministry, but he continues to be present invisibly, through the gift of the Holy Spirit. The ‘Upper Room’ is situated between earth and heaven, and is the place of fraternal charity. “We should go up into this Upper Room and remain there with the Apostles, and persevere in one mind in prayer and contemplation and shedding of tears, that we may deserve to receive the grace of the Holy Spirit.”



In another place, Anthony meditates on Peter’s vision of the animals, which was the prelude to his commission to preach the Gospel to the Roman Cornelius. Preachers, he says, cannot pick and choose their audience. They are sent to good people and to sinners – the latter need them more! They must kill what is harmful to the soul, so that the sinner may rise to a new life in the unity of the Church. The task of Peter is to gather people in, not to exclude them (though they may exclude themselves).





The Lord of Glory





In choosing examples from the Apocalypse, Anthony begins with the vision of Christ that John received. The Lord may be invisible to our mortal eyes, but He truly lives in glory. Even at the end of the first century, some in the Church were growing lukewarm, towards God and towards their neighbour. Anthony was aware of the same problem in the thirteenth century, and it is always with us. It is good to be given a picture of the Lord “with eyes as a flame of fire, feet like fine brass, a voice like many waters.” While we must never forget the humanity and tenderness of our Saviour, we must not forget either that He is the mighty Lord who defends us and calls us to account.



Anthony writes of the famous horses, or horsemen, of the Apocalypse, symbolic representations of war, famine, disease and death: the plagues that have troubled the world throughout its history. This is the world as it is, subject to natural disasters and to human mismanagement and malice. Now as always it is natural and human to ask, “Where is God in all this? Why does He allow it to happen?” The Christian has no glib answer, only to say that we continue to believe in God, and to see in Jesus Christ that God is a sharer of our suffering. He is present, too, in the devoted people who go into the darkness to minister to the diseased, the dying and the despairing.





The Church Triumphant





John saw in his vision the countless number of the redeemed, the new Israel saved from earthly Exile. He saw the City of God, the New Jerusalem, coming down from heaven to earth. Beset as we are by trials and troubles, we need to keep faith that God is more powerful than His enemies and will save us. We need to remember that the City we seek on our pilgrimage is not built up by us, from below, but is the gift of God, from above.



A stream of water flowed from the City. Anthony writes, “O man, if you will attend to the commandments of God, you will rejoice, secure in perpetual peace. Of the fullness of living water, the Psalm says: For with thee is the fountain of life.” In order to be a true citizen of the Kingdom, it is necessary to keep the commandments, summarised as the love of God and the love of our neighbour. Divine Love, which is the gift of the Holy Spirit in us, gives us the power to live Christ-like lives. It is like a fountain, refreshing all who come to it. We are the conduits through which the love of God flows into the world: that is why we must keep ourselves pure and free from obstructions.



Luke wrote of the infant Church in its historical aspect, which has much to teach us. Even then there was controversy and conflict. We can learn from this. John gives an ‘eternal’ vision of the Church, always under the eye and the care of her glorious Lord. We must not forget this. As we hear these books read in the Eastertide liturgy, we recall these two dimensions.