In the last section of this commentary, we saw how, at the beginning of the Legionary Promise, we call upon the All-Holy Spirit to descend upon the person of the legionary and make qualitative and quantitative changes within that person. We discussed the meaning of prayers that are of this "epicletic" nature, as well as the way that the Most Holy Mother of God became the perfect dwelling of the Holy Spirit to the extent that there was a moral union between her person and the Divine Person of the Spirit.
All of this is an introduction to the second paragraph. In this second paragraph of the Promise, we see mentioned the specific qualitative and quantitative changes that are being sought by the Spirit's activity. Here we see an important parallelism between the epicleses of the Divine Liturgies of the Church, the prayers of blessing modeled upon them and the text of the Promise. In all these cases we are asking for a transformation of sorts. In the first case, the epiclesis of the Divine Liturgy is asking for the transformation of the gifts into the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus. In the second case, the prayer is asking for ordinary things to be transformed into vehicles of the grace of the Holy Spirit. Here, in the last case, the individual legionary is asking that he or she be transformed into one, who is in union with the Most Holy Mother of God. Put into more precise theological language, we are each, individually, asking to attain through the grace of the All-Holy Spirit a moral union with the one, who has a perfect moral union with the Spirit.
Last time, in the context of the first paragraph of the Promise, we had the opportunity to meditate on the way that the Most Holy Mother of God is overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, just as we see the Spirit fill the Temple at its completion in the days of Solomon. The similarity of the terms of the two accounts is deliberate. The Most Holy Mother of God becomes the Holy Spirit's living Temple. In her is the Cherubimic Throne upon which the Lord of Hosts rests. In the fourth chapter of the Gospel According to Saint John, the Lord Jesus foretells to the Samaritan Woman that the day is coming when the Lord will rightly be worshipped neither on the mountain in Samaria (Gerizim), nor in the Temple in Jerusalem (He leaves the question open, I believe deliberately, whether the Father was ever rightly worshipped in the Second Temple). He tells the Samaritan Woman that the Lord is now to be worshipped "in Spirit and in truth." This is not to say that there is no Temple, but only that there is no Temple that is confined to any particular place. No, there is a Temple, a spiritual Temple, that all who believe have equal access to, because it exists in Heaven. In his Apocalypse, the Holy Apostle John the Theologian tells us that he witnesses the New Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven from God. In his description of the new Holy City, he goes on to say that the city has no Temple, for the Lord God and the Lamb were its Temple. Yet, this is equivalent to saying that the entire city is a Temple. The Most Holy Mother of God is this Temple.
In the Old Testament, despite the fact that the Holy Spirit descended and filled the Solomonic Temple, overshadowing it to the extent that the priests were not even able to minister for a time, there are also accounts of certain individual persons being similarly filled with the Holy Spirit. We have vivid accounts of the Lord's Spirit filling both kings and prophets, for example. The equivalent of this in the New Law is much more universal and enduring, for while the Holy Spirit has descended and filled the Church, nevertheless, the anointing of the Holy Spirit can be seen in gifts and charisms in all the individuals in the Church, and even in certain persons beyond its known boundaries.
Putting the prayer of the Promise into the terms and categories of the individuals, who received a special outpouring and indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the time of the Old Law, we can see that we are asking for the Divine Grace to put us into a disposition of constant union with and orientation towards the Temple. This is surely what the Psalmist is praying for, when we read: "One thing only do I seek: to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life." Obviously, no one, not even the priests, literally, physically dwelt in the House all the time. No, the text is talking about a desire for constant union with the Divine Presence. In the same way, through the Promise, the legionary is beseeching the Holy Spirit, for the love of the Lord Jesus Christ, to be habitually, intellectually united with the Most Holy Mother of God (for her desires to be my desires, her aspirations, my aspirations; her virtues, my virtues). In other words, we are seeking to love the Lord Jesus with the same love with which His Most Holy Mother loves Him. Even though this is a human love, it is amplified by the Holy Spirit to be worthy of its object. To love is to will the good. God wills the good of human beings all-powerfully, all-knowingly and all-compassionately. There is obviously no proportion between the love that God has for us and the love that we return to God. Yet, union with the Most Holy Mother of God, because of her union with the Holy Spirit, makes it possible for creatures to will the good of God in proportion to His love for us.
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