Before the opening of the Vatican Council, Roman Catholics were heard to say that while we must not think of the council as a natural occurrence, neither ought we to view it as supernatural. One wonders, perhaps, why anyone would be tempted to think of the council as something supernatural. But then we must remember that Protestants, as do Roman Catholics, frequently offer the prayer Veni Creator Spiritus before church assemblies. Does this prayer for the coming of the Spirit not suggest an expectation of something supernatural?
When the Roman Catholic says that the council is not to be thought of supernaturally, he means to say that a council is not to be put in the category of miracle, of mystic vision, or of the purely vertical dimension. The work of the Spirit, he insists, manifests itself in and through the human, the natural. One must not, writes Roman Catholic theologian E. Schillenbeekcx, have romantic, lyrical notions about the council.
The council is part and parcel of all that is human, relative, non-absolute, and non-final. Conciliar decisions rise from a collective consciousness that is tempered by the age. The worldwide episcopate reaches out for the Word of God as the source of power and light for our thinking and doing. But the council, Schillenbeekcx insists, will not transcend the theological efforts and accomplishments of our day. It will be moving on the plane of the doctrinal work of the past 20 years. The Holy Spirit will be present, indeed, but he will be working in the context of the limited and imperfect terms of our human situation. Schillenbeekcx reflects genuine sobriety and good sense.
This leads us to the question of the Veni Creator Spiritus and its relation to what we may call the unexpected or surprising elements of Church experience. We Protestants do pray for the coming of the Spirit in our midst. And after we pray we go about our work as human beings, using our limited judgment and employing political means. All sorts of very human considerations are involved in the work for which we pray the involvement of the Creator Spirit.
Doctrinal decisions of Protestant synods always reflect the theological thought and achievements of a given day. They do not come to synods de novo, without preparation and conditioning beforehand. What, then, do we intend when we pray, Veni Creator Spiritus? Is the Spirit limited to the prevailing conditions within the Church at that particular time? Or are our human thoughts suddenly intruded upon and sent into a new channel by the supernatural work of the Spirit? Are we really open to the possibility of the unexpected, the surprising activity of the Spirit?
In correspondence Dr. Schillenbeekcx emphasized the fact that Roman Catholics must be open to the possibility of surprises in the council. But he added that we must acknowledge as well the limited, human context in which the Spirit would be at work. The council must not be expecting miracles, he insisted. Thus he suggests that prayer for the Spirit must involve a readiness for the unusual, but not an insistence on the miraculous.
We tend to pray for the Spirit too casually. Recall the Reformation and its surprising effect upon the Church of West Europe. There were plenty of human, fallible, limited factors at work there. The Reformation was not a miraculous event. There were preparations for it long before the event. Think of Luther hard at work on the Book of Romans in 1515. Everything did not happen at once, in a sudden, miraculous way. Yet there was a charismatic factor at work.
The Church always experiences both the vertical and horizontal dimensions in its own life. And when we pray for the coming of the Spirit we ought to be open to his coming and ready for whatever he may do. We must be sure not to limit his work by our own definitions of what he must do. We must surely avoid party loyalties which we feel cannot be changed by him. He who prays for the coming of the Spirit must see to it that he stands at the window of anticipation.
Human factors, the psychological and sociological, are unavoidable elements within Church life. But what we must beware of is the tendency to allow these to confine and strait-jacket the work of the Spirit of God. Aware that the Spirit works within and through the human side of Church life, we must be doubly guarded against letting the human side control and determine the possibilities of the Spirit’s activity. When we do the latter, sometimes unwittingly, we are working on the assumption that nothing can really happen through the Spirit. Pentecost then becomes merely an interesting historical incident. We stop believing that the Church is created and re-created by the Spirit in and through human conditions. The coming of the Spirit is not a miracle. When we pray for his coming, we must be sitting on the edge of expectation, believing with St. Paul that “he is able to do abundantly above all that we ask or think.”
It is worthwhile to listen to Catholic voices as they speak about their expectations for the present council. They remind us of the presence of both vertical and horizontal dimensions in the Church.
Within Roman Catholic circles today a great deal of emphasis is being put on the fact that the Church is a congregation of sinners. More than ever, theological spokesmen are calling attention to this reality. We hear it from Hans Urs von Balthasar (Basel), from Karl Rahner (Innsbruck), and from Hans Küng (Tübingen), as from others. With this emphasis in the background, prayer for the coming of the Spirit gets a new tone.
While I write this, the Vatican Council has been at work for less than a month. No one can prophesy anything at this stage. But all believers and the entire Church must recognize the tremendous importance of praying for the Spirit.
The prayer for the Holy Spirit is a prayer that embraces the entire Church, the Vatican Council as well as the “churches” in their unholy divisions. Veni Creator Spiritus! Let us pray it anew. Let us watch for the new winds of the Spirit.
