Today’s Gospel invites us to reflect once again on the Holy Spirit.
Jn 14:15–21
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans[1]; I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me; because I live, you will live also. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
This other Advocate whom the Lord has sent is the Holy Spirit, who dwells within us, enlightens and strengthens us, leads us on the path of sanctification, and inspires the Church to proclaim the Gospel in the right way.
The Holy Spirit must be clearly distinguished from human reason, which is a great gift from God but belongs to the natural order. The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, is God Himself and communicates Himself in a supernatural light. This light then acts upon our intellect and also upon our will, so that we may put into practice what we have come to know in God.
Let us take a very simple example of this process: We recognize in the Holy Spirit that Jesus is the Son of God. It is therefore a supernatural process, or, to put it another way: The supernatural light communicates to our intellect that this is the case. Our mind now draws the consequences: If Jesus is the Son of God, then we listen to Him, and our heart is drawn to Him because we are able to recognize His love.
If the Holy Spirit, as the third Person of God, works within us and we do not stray from God’s ways, He will always be our Advocate, as Jesus says in the passage above.
Now it also becomes understandable that the world cannot receive Him, for He does not come from it and is not begotten by it. Even though people, by virtue of God’s natural gifts, are step by step able to recognize His order of creation and act rationally, direct intervention is required for the grace-filled supernatural knowledge of God. We cannot say how and when God grants this supernatural knowledge, or whether people might even permanently close themselves off from a deeper knowledge of God.
Just how much the Lord cares for His own is also evident in the words:
“I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.”
Through the sending of the Holy Spirit, the Lord grants us His abiding presence; we are not orphans who have been abandoned, like the disciples who, after the Lord’s crucifixion, initially did not know how things would proceed. No, with the Resurrection of Jesus a new era begins; we can say it is the era of the Church. It is the time in which Christ’s message is now to be carried out into the whole world, to make all peoples disciples of Christ and to incorporate them into the Body of Christ through Holy Baptism (cf. Mt 28:19). This is the commission given to the Lord’s disciples, and thus the decisive mission for all of us until Christ’s return. The evangelization of the nations is therefore the task not only for a new phase of history, but until the end of time.
The driving force behind this mission is the Spirit of God Himself, who was sent to us. The Holy Spirit will tirelessly strengthen us to live our own discipleship of the Lord as authentically as possible and to walk the paths He opens up to people. He will always remind us of the Lord’s command to make disciples of all nations. And if, over time, the Church should grow weary of fulfilling her mission in the power of the Spirit, if she makes too many compromises with the world or even threatens to lose her way, the Holy Spirit will ensure that people are raised up who will stand by the Church through their witness.
It is important for us believers to live in an intimate relationship with the Holy Spirit, to get to know Him ever better. This is not so difficult, for He Himself desires to be our Comforter and wants us to heed His guidance. We hear Him not only through Sacred Scripture and the voice of the Church; He also speaks to us in our hearts, for Jesus says that He will be in us. We are invited to discover Him more and more, to enter into conversation with Him, and to distinguish Him ever more clearly from thoughts and feelings that arise from our own nature. He will always inspire us to prayer, to closeness with God, to trust, to good deeds, and to vigilance in this world. When we have strayed from the path, He will always invite us to come to the cross of our Lord and ask for forgiveness. Like Jesus, He will glorify the Father and lead us to know God’s love more and more, and He will enable us to pay attention to His love. Let us regard Him as what He truly is for us: both the Master of the spiritual life and the inspirer of the proclamation of the Gospel, and our most intimate divine Friend!
[1] This word was changed by the translator — The RSVCE has ‘desolate’.