A Reflection for Feria Sexta Quattuor Temporum Pentecostes ~ Dies Octavæ I. classis
Joel 2:23–24, 26–27 — St. Luke 5:17–26
Upon this Friday within the sacred Octave of Pentecost, the Church gathers her children to the Ember fast, that ancient discipline by which the faithful sanctify the turning of the seasons and beg of Almighty God the gift of fruitful labour and faithful ministers. The day is clothed in the dignity of the Octava, and the Holy Ghost, lately descended upon the Apostles in tongues of fire, still hovers over the assembly. It is fitting, then, that the lections appointed for this Mass should speak to us of outpouring — of rain upon the parched land and of grace upon the paralysed soul.
The Promise of the Latter Rain
The prophet Joel cries out to the children of Sion: “Be glad, and rejoice in the Lord your God: because he hath given you a teacher of justice, and he will make the early and the latter rain to come down to you as in the beginning” (Joel ii. 23, Douay-Rheims). The Hebrew môreh admits of a twofold sense, and the Latin doctorem justitiæ — “a teacher of justice” — has long invited the Fathers to read here far more than the mere refreshment of the soil.
For the ancient interpreters, the imber matutinus et serotinus, the morning and the evening rain, signifies the gift of the Holy Ghost poured forth upon the Church in two seasons: the first at the founding of the people of God under the Law and the Prophets, the latter and more abundant outpouring upon the Apostles at Pentecost. St. Cyril of Alexandria, in his Commentary on the Twelve Prophets, sees in the doctor justitiæ none other than Christ Himself, the true Teacher who justifies, and in the descending rain the grace that He sends down upon those who believe. The seed of the word, dry and lifeless in the unwatered heart, springs up only when this heavenly rain descends.
What was promised to Joel’s hearers in figure is fulfilled in the plenitudo gratiæ of this Octave. “And you shall eat in plenty, and shall be filled: and you shall praise the name of the Lord your God, who hath done wonders with you” (Joel ii. 26). The threshing-floors filled with wheat and the presses overflowing with wine and oil are the visible image of an invisible abundance: the soul, watered by the Paraclete, brings forth the fruits of the Spirit, caritas, gaudium, pax (Gal. v. 22).
And the consummation of the prophecy is this divine indwelling: “And you shall know that I am in the midst of Israel: and I am the Lord your God, and there is none besides” (Joel ii. 27). St. Jerome, in his Commentary on Joel, observes that this knowledge — scietis — is no bare cognition but the intimate possession of God dwelling within His people, a foretaste of that promise the Lord would make in the Upper Room: “We will come to him, and will make our abode with him” (John xiv. 23). The Spirit given at Pentecost is precisely this presence in the midst of Israel, now grown to the fulness of the Catholic Church.
The Rising of the Paralytic
The Gospel of St. Luke sets before us a scene of crowded urgency. “And it came to pass on a certain day, as he sat teaching… the power of the Lord was to heal them” (Luke v. 17). The paralytic, borne by faithful friends and let down through the tiles when the press of the multitude barred the door, is laid before the feet of Christ. And the Lord, seeing their faith, speaks not first to the body but to the soul: “Man, thy sins are forgiven thee” (Luke v. 20).
Here the Fathers fasten their attention. St. Ambrose, in his Exposition of the Gospel according to St. Luke, marvels that the Lord rewards the faith of those who carried the man — fidem ferentium — and grants pardon to him who was borne. Great, he says, is the Lord, who through the merits of some bestows His grace upon others; and he bids us see in this a lesson concerning the intercession of the saints and the bearing of one another’s burdens. The four who lowered the paralytic are an image of those who, by prayer and charity, bring the helpless soul into the presence of Christ.
The Scribes murmur in their hearts: “Who is this who speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?” (Luke v. 21). And in this very accusation, as St. Cyril of Alexandria notes in his Commentary on Luke (Homily on this passage), they unwittingly confess the truth: forgiveness of sins belongs to God alone — and Christ forgives sins; therefore Christ is God. What they urge as blasphemy is in fact the demonstration of His divinity. The Lord, knowing their thoughts, answers with a question that lays bare the logic of the miracle: “Which is easier, to say, Thy sins are forgiven thee; or to say, Arise and walk?” (Luke v. 23).
St. Bede the Venerable, in his Homilies on the Gospels, draws out the order of the divine pedagogy: the healing of the body is wrought as the sign of the healing of the soul. The invisible remission of sin, which the eye cannot perceive, is proved by the visible raising of the palsied limbs. “But that you may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,) I say to thee, Arise, take up thy bed, and go into thy house” (Luke v. 24). And immediately the man rose, took up that whereon he lay, and went his way glorifying God.
The Two Lections United
How aptly the Church has joined these two passages upon this Ember Friday of Pentecost. Joel proclaims the rain of the Spirit, who teaches justice and dwells in the midst of His people; the Gospel shows that Spirit’s first and proper work — the remission of sins. For the paralysis of the body is, in the spiritual sense the Fathers love, the very figure of the soul bound and immobilised by sin, unable of itself to rise toward God. It is the latter rain of grace, poured forth from the wounded side of Christ and given in fulness at Pentecost, that loosens these bonds.
St. Gregory the Great, treating elsewhere of such healings, teaches that the Lord first remits the inward sin and then restores the outward strength, because the wound of the soul is graver than that of the body. The order is everywhere the same: first justification, then the power to walk in the way of the commandments. The man who takes up his bed is the soul that, once carried in its helplessness, now bears the very instrument of its former weakness as a trophy of grace, and walks upright in newness of life.
And so the plenitudo of Joel — the floors filled with wheat — finds its echo in the crowds that, beholding the miracle, were all filled with fear, and they glorified God… saying: We have seen wonderful things to-day (Luke v. 26). Vidimus mirabilia hodie. The wonders done of old in the fields of Israel are surpassed by the wonder done in the heart of the sinner: that God dwells in the midst of His people, forgiving iniquity, and there is none besides Him.
For Devotion and Imitation
Let the faithful soul, keeping this Ember fast, learn three things from these lections.
First, to beg the latter rain — the abundance of the Holy Ghost — upon a heart grown dry. The Spirit lately given at Pentecost is not withdrawn; He is sought afresh in every prayer, every fast, every devout Communion.
Second, to bear one another into the presence of Christ. As the four carried the paralytic, so are we bound by charity to carry the souls of others — by intercession, by good example, by the patient labour of fraternal correction — that they too may hear the word of pardon.
Third, to know that the forgiveness of sins is the greatest of the mirabilia. Let no soul despair of its paralysis, however long it has lain upon its bed. The same power that loosed the limbs of the palsied man is present in the Church, in the tribunal of Penance, where the divine Remittuntur tibi peccata tua still resounds.
A Prayer
Deus, qui hodierna die corda fidelium Sancti Spíritus illustratióne docuísti: da nobis in eódem Spíritu recta sápere, et de ejus semper consolatióne gaudére. — O God, who on this day didst teach the hearts of the faithful by the light of the Holy Ghost: grant us by the same Spirit to relish what is right, and ever to rejoice in His consolation. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
(Collect of the Octave of Pentecost.)
Si placet, the Sacred Liturgy learning path will carry this further — into the theology of the Ember Days, the proper of the Pentecost Octave, and the patristic exegesis of the Gospel healings. The Lives of the Saints path would likewise illumine how the Fathers here cited — Ambrose, Cyril, Bede, Gregory — read the whole of Scripture through the wounds of Christ.