Today marks the conclusion of the Easter Season as we celebrate the Solemnity of Pentecost, commemorating that glorious day on which the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles and Mary, ushering in the age of the Church. From that moment, the Holy Spirit has been present in the Church, serving as her “principle of life, unity, and movement” (CCC 797) throughout the ages. The Holy Spirit is the gift Jesus promises to the Church when He says that He “will not leave us orphans.” (John 14:18) He is anticipating His sending of the Holy Spirit at the Ascension when He tells His Apostles: “Behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” (Mt 28:20)
As we reflect on the importance of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church, I think there is a fittingness to our celebrating this feast day as we continue our considerations of the modern voices of figures such as Francis Bacon, Immanuel Kant, and Karl Marx and their impact on our Catholic faith. In this regard, I want to call our attention to an important passage from the New Testament that helps us to have a lens through which to look at these ideas. It comes from the First Letter of St. John, and it begins:
Beloved, do not trust every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they belong to God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. (1 Jn 4:1)
St. John distinguishes between the Spirit of God which “acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh” (1 Jn 4:2) from “every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus [and therefore] does not belong to God.” (1 Jn 4:3) He then says the following about that spirit which does not belong to God: “They belong to the world; accordingly, their teaching belongs to the world, and the world listens to them.” (1 Jn 4:5)
In the paragraphs we have been looking at over the past few weeks, Pope Benedict has helped us in identifying how the principles proposed by these modern thinkers are more and more focused on “the world” and increasingly, the world pays more attention to those voices. But the Church, guided by the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, continues to propose the truth, and as Jesus says of this truth: that it “will set you free.” (John 8:32)
In paragraph 21 of Spe salvi, as he continues to consider the thought of Karl Marx, Pope Benedict notes how a fundamental error Marx makes is his failure to account for human freedom. Marx thinks that if the proper economic environment is created, everything will fall into place. Pope Benedict offers the following critique:
He forgot that man always remains man. He forgot man and he forgot man’s freedom. He forgot that freedom always remains also freedom for evil. He thought that once the economy had been put right, everything would automatically be put right. His real error is materialism: man, in fact, is not merely the product of economic conditions, and it is not possible to redeem him purely from the outside by creating a favourable economic environment. (Spe salvi, 21)
One of the great opponents against Marxism and Communism was Pope St. John Paul II, having himself lived in a country infected by this error. From the early days of his pontificate, he fought against this error by faithfully proclaiming the truths of the faith which extol man’s freedom, a freedom given by the Holy Spirit. The pope considered Marxism as one of the most radical examples of modern man’s “resistance to the Holy Spirit” (Dominum et vivificantem, 56) which, paradoxically, results in his falling deeper into slavery, not the freedom such ideas promise. (cf. Redemptor hominis, 16)
On this Penetecost Sunday, let us pray that the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Truth, will be proclaimed with clarity and courage in our society by the Church, and so bring about the true freedom of the children of God that He desires for us to live.