The Sunday Sermon Archive

Dear Friend,

There is no proper communication or education unless the same spirit is in both the speaker and the listener. It is not enough for us to use the same language and dialect. Suppose we have a spirit within us that is contrary or combative. In that case, even the most complementary and innocent statement will be construed negatively to lead toward the overall goal of finding fault or conflict. If we observe objectively, we often find that those in disagreement hold very different spirits.

When Jesus spoke to the Scribes and Pharisees, their combative and selfish spirit prevented them from hearing Him. They were only listening to find fault. When Jesus spoke to His disciples, much of what He said was hidden because they were still worldly. It was not until the disciples received the Holy Ghost that the words of Jesus became clear. We can hear God's words when the Holy Ghost is with us. St. Francis of Assisi and most of the saints were able to perceive God in everything around him. All of nature speaks of the works of God when we perceive them with the same Spirit that created them and is revealing them to us.

We customarily pray to the Holy Ghost for enlightenment when we wish to understand the Scriptures or our Catechism. All truth comes to us from God and is only perceivable to us when we have the grace of God within us. When God speaks to us, we need to have the Spirit of God — The Holy Ghost — so that we can hear and understand.

God is the teacher, and unless He enters our hearts and minds and opens the way for us to perceive and understand, we remain in darkness. Our human instructors can lecture and preach to us forever, and it will never make any sense to us until God turns on the light of our intellects, memories, and wills. Prayer is the essential element of all study and learning. This is why it is such a big mistake to remove God and prayer from our schools.

What happens quite often in our school systems is simple animal behavior training. Students are trained to remember certain things to respond to a test correctly, and then they can forget that and move on to learn the subsequent behavior or trick. There is no fundamental understanding, just simple robotic conditioned responses. The hope seems to be that some of this will remain, and later on, they will understand, and it will be helpful to them. It appears to be rare when instructor and student have the same spirit within them and there is proper communication of thoughts and ideas. It is even rarer to find the Spirit of God in both instructor and student, and authentic learning and understanding take place. This is what we should be striving to establish.

Parents and teachers need to have the Holy Ghost living within them if they are to truly teach their children. Without God and true religion, we become worse than brute animals and more like devils. The children are often too worldly to understand completely, but when they cooperate with grace, the things that parents and teachers have said will begin to make sense.

We seldom think of the terminology that we use, but words often indicate the spirit that motivates us. Many people in the world label themselves as "Protestant." Few have any idea that they have labeled themselves as protesters. Some even stumble when asked what it is that they are protesting.

Religion, to many people, is simply programmed responses. It is much easier to give the standard trained response than calling upon the Holy Ghost and working on believing, understanding, and love. Too often, we treat the subject of prayer and the study of religion like secular activities and secular studies. It is not enough to memorize and repeat prayers that we have heard or read. It is not enough for us to open up a Catechism book and read it. Nor is it enough to memorize parts of the book.

True prayer comes not just from the memory or even the intellect. We must use memory and intellect, but we must not forget to bring forth our wills. Our prayers must come from the mind, heart, and soul if they are to be effective. To truly pray the prayers we have memorized, we should strive to enter into the same spirit of the person who first composed them.

True religious study means that we put our hearts and minds into entering into the same spirit with which the dogmas were initially written, and that spirit is the Holy Ghost.

Come Holy Ghost and fill the hearts of Thy faithful!

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