For each of the last five evenings, after Mass we have prayed the novena prayers to St Philip in preparation for his feast day. They are simple and heartfelt, calling on our Holy Father’s aid for this little corner of the Lord’s vineyard which is never without need of help. The words of the hymns, written in his honour by old Fathers over the years, remind us of his life and his patronage of us in heaven. As part of those devotions we read from St Philip’s life, giving us a picture of the fruits as well as the cause of Our Holy Father’s sanctity throughout his long life. We pray to the Holy Spirit during the novena on account of the great closeness St Philip had to the third person of the Blessed Trinity. That proximity to the Holy Spirit changed the young Philip’s life, and remained for him as a Pentecostal fire for the rest of his life. From the moment in the catacombs in 1544 when the Holy Spirit appeared to him as a ball of fire and entered into his heart he was changed both spiritually and physically: his heart was enlarged so much that his ribs remained broken his entire life. Philip was taken over by the Spirit and his life was guided by the Holy Spirit’s promptings in an extraordinary way.

St Philip’s life is a good place to look for evidence of what that Holy Spirit can do in a soul that is well disposed to him. If, in St Philip’s life, we see compassion, courage and a hatred of sin, all tied to his profound devotion (particularly to the Mass) along with a radiant, beautiful joy, we see too the work the Holy Spirit wants to do in us. Although our Father enjoyed these spiritual gifts in an unusual and impressive way, we should certainly try to imitate much of what the Spirit did in him. We should imitate him in his prayerfulness, in his love of learning of the things of God, in his devotion to the Blessed Eucharist and in his zeal for winning souls for the Lord — this is what his Oratory, after all, is for — it is for making us into saints after the pattern Philip sets.

Feast days are given us as helps, useful steps on our journey to support and encourage us. Put Monday in your diary, come to the Mass for our Saint and ask him to help you in your own journey with God. Take him as your own special patron and entrust your cares to him. Perhaps we could all of us try a little bit more to allow that saint of “gentleness and kindness, cheerful in penance, and in precept winning” to steer the little ships of our lives. And if we do trust him as our friend and guide, we ca be confident that he, kindest and most cheerful of fathers, will help us along that journey to the place where he is now and forever.

There has been much in the media recently about the principal image of Our Lady in Rome, Our Lady Salus populi Romani, whose history of veneration by the popes goes back to St Gregory the Great, who brought the image into Rome. But this is only one of the titles given to the image of Our Lady, and for much of its history, it has been known as the image of Our Lady, Regina caeli, the Queen of Heaven, the title by which we invoke the Mother of God so often during the Easter season.

This season is marked by this Marian antiphon in a way that the other seasons are not, because it even replaces the Angelus three times a day. So it seems worth taking a look at the text of it. It is shorter and simpler than the others. We don’t have the poetry of the Salve regina, where Eve’s exiled children mourn and weep in a vale of tears. We don’t have the clever Hebrew-Latin pun of the Alma redemptoris mater (Alma is both Latin for “kind” and Hebrew for “virgin”). In fact, the text is extremely straightforward:

O Queen of heaven rejoice! alleluia:
For he whom thou didst merit to bear, alleluia,
Hath arisen as he said, alleluia.
Pray for us to God, alleluia.

It seems we spend three quarters of this antiphon telling the Mother of God things she already knows. But we do that in all these antiphons, and not for her benefit. When we say, “Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of mercy; hail, our life, our sweetness and our hope!”, we are reminding ourselves that Mary is merciful, and a consolation to us in this life. When we call her “clement, loving and sweet”, it’s not an empty compliment, but another reminder for us. In the same way, as we speak to Mary so many times a day throughout Eastertide, we are reminded that her Son is risen from the dead, as he foretold, and that we are joyful about it.

The last line is different. “Pray for us to God.” It’s not about Easter. We’re not telling her something that she already knows. We’re asking her to do something. Or…is it really that different? If we treat it in the same way as the first three lines, maybe we are telling the Queen of heaven to do something that she not only already knows but is already doing. This antiphon that we say and sing so many times throughout the season of Easter, then, is a joyful reminder of the Resurrection, and a joyful reminder that we have an advocate in heaven, looking out for us and pleading our cause, even as we go about our day and are busy with much more earthly things. Our Lady, Queen of heaven, pray for us.

Today, the Cardinals go into Conclave, locked together in the Sistine Chapel, until they elect the next Pope, the successor of St Peter. It is a serious business, since so much hangs on who that man will be. In our church, as in many, many churches throughout the Catholic world, Masses have been offered Pro eligendo Summo Pontifice, with accompanying prayers from the faithful, that the Cardinals will choose the right man. There have been Masses offered in honour of the Holy Spirit, since it is understood that he has an important part to play in the process. But what is his role? It is easy to imagine that the Holy Spirit is solely responsible for the choice, but that might not account for the bad popes who have governed the Church from time to time.

Pope Francis, who revealed that Cardinal Ratzinger had been his candidate in 2005, was asked what he thought the Holy Spirit was saying to the Catholic Church through the election of Pope Benedict. He said that the Spirit was saying, “Here I am in charge. There is no room for manoeuvre.” Back in 1997, when Ratzinger was asked whether the Spirit was responsible for the choice of the new pope, he chuckled and said, “I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the Pope… I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined.”

Pope Benedict’s nuanced response is surely correct. He acknowledges the sense in which the Holy Spirit isn’t responsible: the electors have free will to choose whom they will. But at the same time, he also acknowledges the sense in which the Holy Spirit is responsible: the Spirit’s elastic, educative approach ultimately envelops the process and shields the barque of Peter from shipwreck. And certainly in the last centuries, the Church has been blessed with some outstanding holders of the Keys of Peter. Think of those men from the last couple of centuries, whose cause for beatification has been successfully pursued: Pius IX, Pius X, Pius XII (Venerable), John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II. The Alexander VI’s and Boniface VIIIs are all very much in the past.

The manner in which the Press reports on the choice and election of the new Vicar of Christ has been very much as if it were a political appointment. Hence the mantra from the Cardinals, “not a successor of Francis, but a successor of Peter,” which gives us hope that while the human element is indeed present — the Cardinals vote, debate, and deliberate — we should hold firmly to the belief that God works through their hearts and minds as they cast their votes.

When the new Pope emerges on the balcony of St Peter’s (whatever his theological colours) some of his supporters may think to themselves that the Holy Spirit has dramatically intervened and secured the best man for the job. Some of his critics, on the other hand, might think that the God has just withdrawn his wisdom and left the Cardinals to pick the wrong person.

Neither would be right, and both would be thinking not as God does but as human beings do. Instead, the decision of the cardinal electors will resound with the same unified but distinctive force as that declaration of the first apostles: “For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…” (Acts 15:28)

The gospel readings at Mass during the Easter Octave give us the Resurrection appearances of Christ after Easter: to the two women, to Mary Magdalene, to the Twelve, to the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus, at the sea of Galilee. Each is given to prove that he is truly risen, truly alive — he talks with them, eats with them, allows them to touch him. On Easter Sunday we read from St Peter’s great sermon in Acts, that the Lord appeared to those “who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead”.

The Lord’s insistence that the Apostles recognised he was truly, bodily risen and alive was not only for their benefit, but for ours too. Our whole Christian faith centres on the resurrection of Christ. Had he not been raised from the dead, he would be no more than another great prophet or teacher. At worst, he would be a fraud. The resurrection is the guarantee that he is, indeed, God, and his words and actions are those of God himself. It is the guarantee that we can trust those words, and therefore trust that he will lead us to the Father and everlasting life. As St Paul says, “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is also in vain.”

You and I are not able to eat and drink with Jesus as the Apostles did. We cannot put our fingers into the wounds made by the nails in his hands. We know that he rose from the dead because the Apostles knew. We believe because they believed. That is why it is the faith of the Apostles in the resurrection of the Lord that is the foundation of our Catholic faith: the whole deposit rests on the Apostolic witness of St Peter, St James, St John, and the others.

This Apostolic witness has continued down the centuries through the ministry of the successors of the Apostles, the Bishops of the Church, and especially in the ministry of the Pope. He, and they, are called to confirm their brethren in the faith, and to feed and care for the Lord’s flock. They continue to announce to us, as St Mary Magdalene announced to St Peter, that the Lord is truly risen.

We pray this week for our late Holy Father, Pope Francis, offering the sacrifice of the Mass for him so that he might be raised to new life in God’s kingdom and given the reward of his labours. But we also thank God for the Apostolic witness of His Holiness, who proclaimed the Lord’s resurrection to the end of his life. And we pray too for the Cardinals who will soon enter the conclave to elect a new Successor of St Peter, that the Holy Spirit will guide their deliberations, and give us a good and holy Pope to continue the proclamation of the joy of the Gospel.  

The Apostles are blessed because they saw the Lord; we have not seen him, yet we believe.