The Comforter at the Door

When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me. St. John xv. 26

Beloved in Christ, this is the Sunday of waiting. Forty days are completed since the Lord's resurrection, and ten remain before the Pentecost; we stand, this morning, in the eight-day interval which the Church has from of old observed as the season of expectation. The Lord has been taken up from his disciples, with the angelic word that he shall so come in like manner as he is gone; he has left them, in his last hours upon the earth, with the promise of which we have just heard the substance — that he will not leave them comfortless, but will send the Comforter, even the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, to testify of him; and they have returned to Jerusalem, to the upper room, and there they wait. We, who hear his promise this morning, are to do as they did. We are to wait.

I.  Of What it is We Wait For

Let me first say what the Comforter is, lest you take from this Sunday a pious sentiment in place of a doctrine. The Comforter who comes at Pentecost is not a feeling, nor an influence, nor an enthusiasm, nor a memory of what once happened to the first disciples and is now, by some thinning, applied to ourselves. The Comforter is the Third Person of the holy and blessed Trinity, eternally proceeding from the Father, sent by the Father at the prayer of the Son, and given to the Church and to the souls of the faithful as the very presence of God himself. He comes — the Person comes — into our midst at Pentecost, and into our souls in the ordinary course of grace; and he comes to remain.

The Acts of the Apostles records the outward signs of his coming on that first Pentecost — the rushing wind, the tongues of fire, the speaking in the languages of the gathered nations — but these are the signs only, not the substance. The substance is that the Holy Spirit, then for the first time poured out upon the Church in the manner peculiar to the New Covenant, took up his dwelling among us; and that he has not since departed. Pentecost was not a day. It is the inauguration of an age. We live, all of us, in the age of Pentecost. The Spirit who came upon the Apostles in the upper room is the same Spirit who has been given to us at our baptism, who was sealed upon us at our confirmation, and who works in us through the prayers and sacraments of the Church.

Pentecost was not a day. It is the inauguration of an age.

II.  Of the Manner of His Coming Upon Us

But here, beloved, you must hear a distinction which our Anglican forefathers made carefully and which it falls to me to set before you, for it touches what we shall do upon the Eve of Whitsunday and what should be in your minds when we do it.

The same Holy Spirit who came at Pentecost upon the assembled Church comes upon each one of us at three particular moments of our Christian life. He comes first at our Baptism, when by the washing of regeneration we are made members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. The Spirit then enters the soul, plants in it the seed of supernatural grace, and begins his work in us. He comes secondly at our Confirmation, when through the imposition of the Bishop's hands we are sealed with the sevenfold gift — wisdom, understanding, counsel, ghostly strength, knowledge, true godliness, and holy fear — for the strengthening of our Christian profession. The Spirit then matures and seals what was begun at the font; he makes the baptized, who has come to years of discretion, a soldier of Christ, capable of bearing witness to him in the world. He comes thirdly and continually through the regular grace of the Christian life — through the Eucharist most especially, but also through prayer and the disciplines and the sacrament of penance.

These three are not three Spirits, but one Spirit; not three separate gifts, but the one Spirit's continual self-giving in three orders. They are also not interchangeable. Baptism cannot be given over again, for what was once done cannot be undone, and the Lord's word "of water and of the Spirit" admits of no second occasion. Confirmation likewise is once-only: the Bishop sets his seal, and that seal abides; we do not "re-confirm" any more than we re-baptize. The continual grace of the sacraments is, by its nature, repeatable, but only because it is the continual application of the once-given Spirit to our daily life.

Now upon the Eve of Whitsunday, this parish will keep a Vigil, and in that Vigil we shall together renew our baptismal vows. I would have you understand exactly what we will be doing, lest you take the part for the whole. We are not, in renewing our vows, conferring any sacrament. The renewal is not a re-baptism, nor a re-confirmation, nor a third sacrament unknown to the Catholic Church. It is rather a public recollection of what was once-for-all done at our baptism — the rehearsing of the renunciations and the confessions of faith — and the asking of God that the grace then conferred might be at work afresh in our lives. So done, in faith, the renewal of vows is most edifying and most useful. Pretended as a substitute for the sacraments which were already given us, or for those which we have not yet received, it would be a mockery.

For some of you who have been baptized but not yet confirmed, your renewal of vows on the Eve will be a holy rehearsal of what you will, please God, affirm before the Bishop in your Confirmation. For all of you who have been baptized and confirmed both, it will be an act of grace upon grace — a setting of your soul in remembrance of what is already yours, and an asking of God to renew his Spirit's work within you. Either way, the renewal is the recollection of the seal — not the seal itself, for the seal is once-set and abides; but the recollection of the seal is the proper and disciplined exercise of the soul that has been sealed.

The renewal of vows is the recollection of the seal — never to be mistaken for the seal itself, but the proper exercise of the soul that has been sealed.

III.  Of How We Are to Keep These Eight Days, and the Octave Following

Hear then, beloved, what the shape of the days before us shall be.

We have this Sunday and the seven days that follow as our season of expectation, parallel to those nine days which the Apostles passed in the upper room from the Ascension to Pentecost. Make these days a time of attentive prayer. Read each day a portion of the Acts of the Apostles, that you may have in your minds the company of those first disciples; sing or say the Veni Creator Spiritus at your ordinary devotions; ask of God specifically that the Spirit who has been given you may, on Whitsunday, work afresh in you. Above all, do not pass these eight days as if they were ordinary; they are the proximate preparation for the second great feast of the Christian year.

On the twenty-third of May, the Eve of Whitsunday, we shall keep a Vigil at Evensong, with the ancient prophecies of the prophets, the renewal of our baptismal vows, the singing of the Veni Creator Spiritus, and the prayers proper to that solemn night. Make every effort to be present. Where presence is impossible, keep the Vigil at home, after the form which has been prepared for that purpose; the Lord receives equally the prayer of the household chapel and the prayer of the parish church.

On Whitsunday itself, the twenty-fourth of May, the great feast: come prepared, having confessed your sins and made your peace with all men. The Acts of the Apostles will be read, and the Lord's promise of the Comforter, and the Spirit's outpouring shall be again declared in our hearing.

The week that follows is the Whitsun Octave. The Church appointed this week, as in the case of the Easter Octave, for the further formation of those who had been newly baptized at the Pentecost Vigil; the propers of the Octave dwell upon the Spirit's continuing work, and they are profitable reading even where there are no newly baptized to instruct. Within the Octave fall the Whitsun Ember Days — Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday — and these I would commend to you with particular emphasis.

The Ember Days are a small Lent within Eastertide. They are days appointed for two great intentions: first, that those who are to be ordained in the Church may be made worthy of their charge — and the Embertide is, by ancient custom, a particular season for ordinations, falling as it does upon the heels of Pentecost; second, that the Spirit's outpouring at Pentecost may bear fruit in the lives of those who have received it. Keep them, therefore, with such fasting as your health permits, with greater attention to your private devotions, and with prayer for these two intentions: for our bishops and priests, that the Spirit who was sent at Pentecost may abide with them; for vocations to the sacred ministry, that out of this Pentecost-grace the Lord may call forth labourers into his harvest.

The Whitsun Embertide is the proper conclusion of the Pentecost cycle, and it is much weakened in our use; let us, in this small fellowship, attempt its recovery. Where the Vigil is the gathering-in of the Spirit's grace, and the Day itself the great declaration, the Embertide is the appropriation — the bringing of what we have received at Pentecost into the ordinary disciplines of our common life. Without it, Pentecost would be a single Sunday with no consequent shaping; with it, Pentecost becomes a season.

IV.  Conclusion

We are, in this Sunday and the eight days that follow, to do what the Lord's first disciples did. We are to wait. We are to pray. We are to make ready our souls, that what is given us at Pentecost — given, not earned; given by the Spirit's gracious will, not worked up out of our own anticipation — may find us prepared, and that the grace of his coming may be at home in us.

The Comforter is at the door. May he, when he comes, find a clean dwelling and a quiet heart in each one of us; and may he abide with us, as he abides with the holy Catholic Church, unto the end of all things.