Gospel for the 6th Sunday of Easter

From: John 14:15-21

The Promise of the Holy Spirit
(Jesus said to His disciples,) [15] "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. [16] And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Counsellor, to be with you for ever. [17] 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.

[18] "I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you. [19] Yet a little while, and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also. [20] In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. [21] 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."
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Commentary:

15. Genuine love must express itself in deeds. "This indeed is love: obeying and believing in the loved one" (St. John Chrysostom, "Hom. on St. John", 74). Therefore, Jesus wants us to understand that love of God, if it is to be authentic, must be reflected in a life of generous and faithful self-giving obedient to the Will of God: he who accepts God's commandments and obeys them, he it is who loves Him (cf. John 14:21). St. John himself exhorts us in another passage not to "love in word or speech but in deed and in truth" (1 John 3:18), and he teaches us that "this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments" (1 John 5:3).

16-17. On a number of occasions the Lord promises the Apostles that He will send them the Holy Spirit (cf. 14:26; 15:36; 16:7-14; Matthew 10:20). Here He tells them that one result of His mediation with the Father will be the coming of the Paraclete. The Holy Spirit in fact does come down on the disciples after our Lord's ascension (cf. Acts 2:1-13), sent by the Father and by the Son. In promising here that through Him the father will send them the Holy Spirit, Jesus is revealing the mystery of the Blessed Trinity.

"Consoler": the Greek word sometimes anglicized as "paraclete" means etymologically "called to be beside one" to accompany, to console, protect, defend. Hence the word is translated as Consoler, Advocate, etc. Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit as "another Consoler", because He will be given them in Christ's place as Advocate or Defender to help them, since Jesus is going to ascend to Heaven. In 1 John 2:1 Jesus Christ is described as a Paraclete: "We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous". Jesus Christ, then, also is our Advocate and Mediator in Heaven where He is with the Father (cf. Hebrews 7:25). It is now the role of the Holy Spirit to guide, protect and vivify the Church, "for there are, as we know, two factors which Christ has promised and arranged in different ways to continue His mission [...]: the apostolate and the Spirit. The apostolate is the external and objective factor, it forms the material body, so to speak, of the Church and is the source of her visible and social structures. The Holy Spirit acts internally within each person, as well as on the whole community, animating, vivifying, sanctifying" ([Pope] Paul VI, "Opening Address at the Third Session of Vatican II", 14 September 1964).

The Holy Spirit is our Consoler as we make our way in this world amid difficulties and the temptation to feel depressed. "In spite of our great limitations, we can look up to Heaven with confidence and joy: God loves us and frees us from our sins. The presence and the action of the Holy Spirit in the Church are a foretaste of eternal happiness, of the joy and peace for which we are destined by God" ([St] J. Escriva, "Christ Is Passing By", 128).

18-20. At various points in the Supper we can see the Apostles growing sad when the Lord bid them farewell (cf. John 15:16; 16:22). Jesus speaks to them with great tenderness, calling them "little children" (John 13:33) and "friends" (John 15:15), and He promises that He will not leave them alone, for He will send the Holy Spirit, and He Himself will return to be with them again. And in fact He will see them again after the Resurrection when He appears to them over a period of forty days to tell them about the Kingdom of God (cf. Acts 1:3). When He ascends into Heaven they will see Him no longer; yet Jesus still continues to be in the midst of His disciples as He promised He would (cf. Matthew 28:20), and we will see Him face to face in Heaven. "Then it shall be that we will be able to see that which we believe. For even now He is with us, and we in Him [...]; but now we know by believing, whereas then we shall know by beholding.
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Source: "The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries". Biblical text taken from the Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries made by members of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Navarre, Spain. Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland. Reprinted with permission from Four Courts Press and Scepter Publishers, the U.S. publisher.