Sending the Holy Spirit
by Rev. Jack Peterson
Reprinted with permission of "The Arlington Catholic
Herald"
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John wrote to show that Christ was
the Messiah, the Divine Son of God.
Jesus
said to his disciples: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And
I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you
always, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it neither
sees nor knows him. But you know him, because he remains with you, and
will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. In
a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me, because I
live and you will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my
Father and you are in me and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and
observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved
by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him."
It
may not be possible to overemphasize the significance of the Holy Spirit in the
life of the church and the individual Christian. As we approach the end of the
Easter season, the church turns her attention to the Holy Spirit in preparation
for Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the church and her
members.
First
of all, the Holy Spirit makes faith possible. The Holy Spirit is the mysterious
but very real point of contact between the believer and God. We can’t comprehend
who Jesus really is, nor believe in Him as Lord and Savior without the direct
assistance of the third Person of the Holy Trinity: “No one can say, ‘Jesus is
Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3).
Secondly,
the Holy Spirit is a gift from the Father and the Son that immensely enhances
the intimacy of the believer with God. In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus promises
to ask the Father to send the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, to be with us always.
As a result, the Holy Spirit is one of the most significant ways that Jesus
fulfills His promise to remain with us until the end of time. “I will not leave
you orphans; I will come to you” (Jn 14: 18). The Holy Spirit is God’s love
being poured into our hearts. This is an amazing reality: God chooses to dwell
in us, making us temples of the Holy Spirit.
Third,
the Advocate is also the Spirit of Truth. “And I will ask the Father, and he
will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of Truth, whom
the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows him.” The Holy Spirit
enlightens the mind of the believer and helps him or her to accept and embrace
the truths of our faith.
Many
truths that Jesus revealed about God and His plan for us are rather challenging
to embrace. During Jesus’ public ministry, many of His followers found His
teaching on the Eucharist to be hard to accept and “returned to their former way
of life and no longer accompanied him” (Jn 6:65). Many people in the crowds that
followed Jesus found it easy to follow Him while He was preaching against the
hypocrisy of the Pharisees and multiplying the loaves and fishes; however, when
Jesus quietly endured His false trial and humbly embraced the cross, they turned
on Him or just disappeared. The Eucharist and the cross are truths of our faith
that require the help of the Advocate to grasp and embrace.
Fourth,
these beautiful and mysterious truths of our faith inform our way of life. We
live differently because of our encounter with Christ and because of what we
believe about Him. “Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who
loves me.” Loving Jesus and believing in all that He revealed about God and man
go hand in hand. Love and truth cannot be separated for the Christian. “Jesus
said to his disciples: ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments.’ ”
Finally,
the Holy Spirit empowers us to bear witness to the Risen Jesus in our present
day and to imitate Our Lord in His efforts to lead others to God. In our second
reading for today, St. Philip demonstrates the power of the Holy Spirit working
in the life of a believer: “Philip went down to the city of Samaria and
proclaimed Christ to them.” By his example, his preaching and his remarkable
deeds done in Jesus’ name, Philip converted many Samaritans to the Lord, and
“there was great joy in that city.” This is the same city that was filled with
those who believed very differently than the Jews and lived in constant tension
with them because of historical, social and religious differences. In fact, Acts
of the Apostles suggests that the whole city came to believe in Jesus: “Now when
the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they
sent them Peter and John … ” Philip’s success at converting the city of Samaria
is a testimony to the efficacy of the Holy Spirit.
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