Feria VI infra Hebdomadam post Ascensionem ~ IV. classis Missa Exaudi, Domine — Sunday within the Octave of the Ascension repeated
Estote itaque prudentes, et vigilate in orationibus. “Be prudent therefore, and watch in prayers.” (1 Pet 4:7)
I. The Days Between
The Church keeps a peculiar silence in these days. The Lord has ascended, the Spirit is not yet given, and the disciples are commanded to wait. This Friday, the second after the Ascension, the Roman Rite gives us once more the Mass of the Sunday within the octave, Exaudi, with its plaintive Introit drawn from Psalm 26: Exaudi, Domine, vocem meam, qua clamavi ad te—”Hear, O Lord, my voice with which I have cried unto Thee.” The Mother of God and the Apostles abide in the Cenacle. They pray. They wait. And the Church, gathering us into their prayer, places upon our lips the words of the Psalmist who longs to behold the Face that has departed from his sight.
The collect of this Mass gathers the whole posture of the soul in these days:
Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, fac nos tibi semper et devotam gerere voluntatem, et maiestati tuae sincero corde servire. “Almighty and everlasting God, make us ever to have a devoted will toward Thee, and to serve Thy majesty with a sincere heart.”
A devout will and a sincere heart—these are the dispositions of the Cenacle. They are also the dispositions that the two readings of this Mass press upon us with apostolic urgency.
II. The Epistle: Finis Appropinquavit (1 Pet 4:7–11)
The Prince of the Apostles, who was himself present in that upper room, writes to the churches of the Dispersion with the very accent of one who has waited for the Paraclete:
Omnium autem finis appropinquavit. Estote itaque prudentes, et vigilate in orationibus. “But the end of all is at hand. Be prudent therefore, and watch in prayers.” (1 Pet 4:7, Douay-Rheims)
The Apostle joins prudence and vigilance to prayer as the threefold guard of the soul awaiting her Lord. Prudentes—sober-minded, possessed of that sobrietas which the Fathers ranked among the chief weapons against the assaults of the demon. Vigilate—not the agitated wakefulness of the world, but the watching of the betrothed soul awaiting her Bridegroom. In orationibus—in prayers, for the soul that does not pray cannot watch.
Then comes the great Petrine word upon charity:
Ante omnia autem, mutuam in vobismetipsis caritatem continuam habentes: quia caritas operit multitudinem peccatorum. “But before all things have a constant mutual charity among yourselves: for charity covereth a multitude of sins.” (1 Pet 4:8)
The Fathers, with one voice, recognise here a Petrine echo of Proverbs 10:12. St. Augustine, treating of charity throughout his Tractates on the First Epistle of St. John, presses upon us that this charity is no mere affection but the indwelling of God Himself: where charity is, God abides, and where God abides, sin cannot reign. Charity covers sin in a twofold manner—it covers our own sins, as the Lord declared to the woman in the house of Simon the Pharisee that her sins were forgiven because she had loved much (Lk 7:47); and it covers the sins of our brethren, refusing to expose, to publish, or to dwell upon them. This is why St. John Chrysostom, in his homilies on the Gospel of John, repeatedly counsels his flock that the storehouse of the poor sends its goods to God Himself and “puts away all thy sins.”
St. Peter continues:
Hospitales invicem sine murmuratione. “Using hospitality one towards another, without murmuring.” (1 Pet 4:9)
Hospitality without grumbling—how rare a virtue, and how much the Apostle had learned of it from the long journeys upon which he and his brethren depended utterly on the open door of the faithful. The Venerable Bede, in his commentary on the Catholic Epistles, joins this hospitality to the very vigilance commanded above: the Christian who watches for the Lord’s coming receives every guest as if he were Christ Himself, quia hospes erat Christus — “for Christ was the guest.” The grudging table is the table of a soul still half-asleep.
And finally, the Apostle binds all unto a sacred stewardship:
Unusquisque, sicut accepit gratiam, in alterutrum illam administrantes, sicut boni dispensatores multiformis gratiae Dei. “As every man hath received grace, ministering the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” (1 Pet 4:10)
The gifts are manifold—multiformis—and they are not our own but the Lord’s, held in trust. Si quis loquitur, quasi sermones Dei—”If any man speak, let him speak as the words of God.” Here is the seed of all sacred preaching, all priestly ministry, all sound doctrine. The mouth of the steward is not his own; it must conform itself to the eloquia Dei. And the whole Epistle culminates in that doxology which is the very purpose of every Christian act: ut in omnibus honorificetur Deus per Iesum Christum—”that in all things God may be honoured through Jesus Christ.”
III. The Gospel: Cum venerit Paraclitus (Jn 15:26–27; 16:1–4)
The Gospel transports us to the Cenacle on the very night before the Passion. Our Lord has finished speaking of the vine and the branches, of the hatred of the world, and now He utters the great promise that the Church holds before our eyes in these days of waiting:
Cum autem venerit Paraclitus, quem ego mittam vobis a Patre, Spiritum veritatis, qui a Patre procedit, ille testimonium perhibebit de me; et vos testimonium perhibebitis, quia ab initio mecum estis. “But when the Paraclete cometh, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, He shall give testimony of Me. And you shall give testimony, because you are with Me from the beginning.” (Jn 15:26–27)
The Procession of the Spirit
Few verses in the whole of the Fourth Gospel have borne so weighty a theological burden as this one. St. Augustine, in Tractatus in Ioannem 99, draws from this very passage the doctrine of the eternal procession of the Holy Ghost: qui a Patre procedit—who proceedeth from the Father. Augustine, careful as ever, observes that the Lord here speaks of the Spirit’s procession from the Father, but that elsewhere He sends the Spirit Himself: quem ego mittam vobis—”whom I will send you.” The Spirit who proceeds from the Father is also sent by the Son, and from this double action of mission the Latin tradition, with St. Augustine as its master, drew that doctrine which the Church would later define against the Pneumatomachi and again at Florence: that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and from the Son as from one principle.
The Eastern Doctor St. Cyril of Alexandria, in his Commentary on the Gospel of John, treats this same passage with equal precision. The Spirit, he teaches, is not a creature, not a ministering angel, not an impersonal force, but the very Spirit of truth—the substantial Spirit who is consubstantial with the Father from whom He proceeds, and who therefore can testify of the Son with that perfect testimony which is proper to God alone.
The Two Witnesses
But the Lord does not stop at the testimony of the Spirit. He immediately adds: et vos testimonium perhibebitis—”and you also shall bear witness.” Here the Fathers find that twofold testimony which is the constitution of all apostolic preaching. St. John Chrysostom, in his Homilies on John (Hom. LXXVII), explains the order with his characteristic precision: the Spirit comes first; the apostles testify afterward. For without the Spirit, the apostles cannot testify; with the Spirit, their testimony is no longer their own but a participation in the testimony of God Himself. Ille testimonium perhibebit—and through Him, vos testimonium perhibebitis. This is why St. Thomas, gathering up the patristic tradition in the Catena Aurea, can say with Augustine and Chrysostom that the Holy Ghost bears witness in the hearts of the apostles, and the apostles bear witness with their lips and with their blood.
The Greek word martyreō contains within itself the whole future of the Church: the witness will be a martyrdom. To testify of Christ is to suffer for Him.
The Hour That Cometh
And so the Lord forewarns:
Haec locutus sum vobis, ut non scandalizemini. Absque synagogis facient vos: sed venit hora, ut omnis qui interficit vos, arbitretur obsequium se praestare Deo. “These things have I spoken to you, that you may not be scandalized. They will put you out of the synagogues: yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you, will think that he doth a service to God.” (Jn 16:1–2)
St. Chrysostom observes with great pastoral wisdom that the Lord forewarns precisely so that His own may not be scandalized—ut non scandalizemini. He does not promise an easy way; He promises a hard way and the strength to walk it. The persecutor who imagines himself offering obsequium, a religious service, to God in shedding the blood of the saints is a figure of dread realism. Saul of Tarsus would soon be such a man, until the Voice from Heaven undid him on the Damascus road. And the persecutors of every age—those who hate the Church in the name of higher religion, or higher reason, or higher humanity—the Lord foreknew them all. Et haec facient vobis, quia non noverunt Patrem, neque me—”And these things will they do to you, because they have not known the Father, nor Me” (Jn 16:3).
This is the deepest cause of persecution, and the Fathers see it with unanimity: ignorance of God. The world that does not know the Father cannot endure the witness of the Son, and persecutes those who bear that witness. St. Cyril insists that this ignorance is no mere lack of information but a darkening of the heart, a refusal to receive what is freely given.
IV. The Liturgical Pattern
See now how the two readings cohere in the great mind of the Church. The Lord ascends; the Spirit is promised but not yet given; the Apostles wait in prayer. In that interval, what are the marks of the Church?
First, prayer. Vigilate in orationibus. The Mother of the Lord, the Apostles, and we ourselves are constituted as the Church by our common prayer in the upper room.
Second, charity. Ante omnia mutuam in vobismetipsis caritatem continuam habentes. The Spirit who is to come is the vinculum caritatis between the Father and the Son, and He cannot descend upon a community torn by strife.
Third, stewardship. Sicut boni dispensatores multiformis gratiae Dei. Each member ministers from the gifts received, that the Body may be built up against the hour of trial.
Fourth, witness, even unto martyrdom. Vos testimonium perhibebitis. The Spirit who descends is given precisely that the Church may bear witness—and the world that hates the Father will hate the witnesses of the Son.
This is the whole shape of the Church between Ascension and Pentecost; and indeed of the Church in every age, for the Church is always in some sense between the going-up of her Head and the coming-down of His Spirit, awaiting the consummation in the unum corpus of the Lord.
V. Practical Counsel for the Day
The Roman Rite is never content with doctrine alone; she always presses the soul toward acts. Three practices commend themselves to the soul who would keep this Friday well:
An hour of silent prayer in the Cenacle. Take time—an hour if it be possible, or what part of an hour the duties of state permit—to sit before the Blessed Sacrament or in a quiet place, joining yourself in spirit to Our Lady and the Apostles in the upper room. Ask of the Holy Ghost what you most need: light to know Christ, fervour to love Him, strength to bear witness to Him.
The mortification of the tongue. Since charity covereth a multitude of sins, today refuse to speak any uncharitable word, to publish any failing of a neighbour, to murmur at any inconvenience of hospitality. The tongue silenced of evil is half-prepared to receive the Tongues of Fire.
A particular examen on the manifold grace received. What gift has God given you—of intellect, of office, of temporal goods, of priestly orders if you bear them, of motherhood, of friendship? Ask before God this day: Am I a good steward of this gift, or do I bury it?
VI. A Closing Prayer
Let the Church speak the close of this meditation in her own voice. The Postcommunion of the Sunday within the octave, which is also the prayer of this Friday:
Repleti, Domine, muneribus sacris: da, quaesumus, ut in gratiarum semper actione maneamus. Per Dominum nostrum… “Filled, O Lord, with sacred gifts: grant, we beseech Thee, that we may ever abide in thanksgiving. Through our Lord…”
Veni, Sancte Spiritus, reple tuorum corda fidelium, et tui amoris in eis ignem accende.
For Further Reading
The soul who would go deeper into the matter of this Friday’s Mass may turn with profit to:
- St. Augustine, Tractatus in Ioannem, especially Tractates XCII–XCIX (on John 15–16), which treat the procession of the Spirit and the testimony of the witnesses with unsurpassed depth.
- St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of St. John, Homilies LXXVII–LXXVIII, for the pastoral force of the Lord’s farewell discourse.
- St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel of John, Book X, on the divinity of the Holy Ghost as drawn from this very passage.
- St. Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea in Ioannem, on chapters 15 and 16, where the patristic voices are gathered in their full chorus.
- The Venerable Bede, In Epistolas VII Catholicas, on 1 Peter 4, for the application of these counsels to the daily life of the Church.
For a companion reflection, the soul may also consider a Thomistic treatment of the procession of the Holy Ghost, drawing on Summa Theologiae I, qq. 36–38, where the Angelic Doctor sets out the doctrine of the Spirit’s procession a Patre Filioque tamquam ab uno principio—from the Father and the Son as from one principle—precisely as it is implied in this Gospel.
May the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father and is sent by the Son, find us watching in prayer, fervent in charity, and faithful in our witness, when He cometh at the breaking of Pentecost.
Pax Christi.