6th Sunday of Easter
May 25, 2014
John 14: 15-21
St. Vincent’s Hospital, Harrison, N.Y.
“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’”
(John 14: 15).
Today’s gospel reading comes from Jesus’ words
at the Last Supper, addressed to the 11 faithful apostles after Judas had left
the room. Since we want to be among his
faithful disciples, he speaks to us as well.
Two key words in the reading are love and know. Jesus speaks of loving
him, of being loved by the Father, and of his own love for his faithful
disciples. He speaks of knowing or not
knowing the Spirit of truth who is our Advocate.
“If you love me, you will keep my
commandments.” When we love someone,
we’re really eager to please that person—a spouse, a parent, a child, or anyone
with whom we form a special bond. For
many people God’s commandments are just a set of burdensome rules, like parking
regulations or the Internal Revenue code.
No eagerness to observe those rules; they’re something we have to do or we’ll get in trouble. No
love there!
But if you love someone, you go way out of your
way for him or her. You remember
birthdays and anniversaries, you buy flowers or tickets to a show, you help
with chores, you spend time with that someone, you tend him when he’s sick. And it’s a pleasure, not a burden. Jesus loves us and wants to do good things
for us and spend time with us—spend eternity with us, in fact. He wants us to love him, as well. If we love him, we want to listen to him,
i.e., follow his teachings, keep his commandments.
But what are his commandments? How do we know
what Jesus wants of us? Yes, we can
memorize the 10 Commandments—and that’s a good thing to do. We can hear Jesus say several times at the
Last Supper, “Love one another.” But
what do those commandments mean today, in the 20th century?
Some things are pretty obvious in any century. Cold-blooded murder—not allowed! Adultery—not allowed! Lying so as to harm another person—not
allowed!
But other things are less obvious. Jesus didn’t leave us specific guidelines
about modern genetics, about end-of-life care in hospitals and nursing homes, about
modern war, about care for the environment, about immigration policy, etc.
He did leave us something, however: “another Advocate … the Spirit of truth to be
with you always.”
An advocate is someone who speaks for us before
powerful people or in special situations.
Lawyers advocate for us in court, for example. Jesus is our Advocate with his Father,
interceding for us sinners. But, since
he’s about to leave his disciples to go to his Father, he speaks here of
“another Advocate,” who will remain with us and be with us always. This is the Holy Spirit.
You can see that the Church is preparing us for
the feast of Pentecost thru our readings in these days. The 1st reading, from Acts, also spoke of the
Holy Spirit.
This Advocate speaks in a different way, not
interceding for us, but speaking to us on behalf of the Father and of
Jesus. He is the Spirit of truth, Jesus
says. He helps us understand the message
of Jesus, which is the “truth that sets us free” (John 8:32); Jesus calls
himself “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), so this Spirit is the
Spirit of Jesus who keeps us in touch with Jesus, aligned with Jesus. He helps us to know what Jesus wants of us, his disciples, which is that we seek
the truth and live the truth.
And when we want to know what is Jesus’
commandment today, how we are to love Jesus today, we listen to the Spirit of
truth who remains with us, i.e., with the apostles, with the Church that’s
built on the foundation of the apostles—as St. Luke so graphically illustrates
when he describes Pentecost in Acts 2.
In a world with a never-ending supply of moral
questions, questions about how to love one another authentically and not
selfishly, the Spirit of truth speaks to us thru the Catholic Church, as the
Spirit has done since the 1st Pentecost.
The Church addresses every contemporary moral issue: life and death, war and peace, sexual
morality, the universal dignity of human beings, care for the poor, the sick,
those without any advantage in society, care for our environment—sometimes only
in terms of general principles, sometimes in specific details, as she does on
abortion, contraception, in vitro fertilization, stem cell research, for
example. You may have noticed that not
many people seem to pay attention to the Church’s teachings. Jesus said, “The world cannot accept the
Spirit of truth because it neither sees nor knows him” (14:17).
The choice of living with the Spirit of Jesus,
of loving Jesus by keeping his commandments, is ours. We committed ourselves to being his
disciples, to walking in his ways, when we were baptized and confirmed. We have to recommit ourselves to him—to being
in love with him and to seeking his truth—every day.
God bless you!
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