6th Sunday of Easter - Getting ready for the promised Spirit of Truth

There is a restlessness in the Church during these days between Easter and Pentecost. We are a people who have heard the great news — He is risen! — and yet we are still waiting, still longing, still incomplete. The disciples knew this feeling intimately. Jesus had been crucified, buried, and raised — and now He was preparing to leave them again. And they were afraid.
Into that fear, He speaks some of the most consoling words in all of Scripture: 

"I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you."

​Jesus looks into the faces of His frightened disciples and makes them a promise they could not yet fully understand:

"I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it, because it remains with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you." (John 14:16–18)
The word orphan cuts to the heart. An orphan is one who has been left:  abandoned, bereft, without a protector, without a home. And Jesus, who knows every wound in the human heart, names that fear directly. I will not leave you like that.

He will ask the Father and the Father will give another Advocate. The word used in the Greek is Paraclete: one called alongside to help, to defend, to intercede, to strengthen. Jesus Himself is the first Paraclete; the Spirit is the second, the one who will carry the presence and the work of Jesus forward in every age, in every soul, in every corner of the earth. This is the promise: the Spirit of truth, dwelling in us. Not visiting, or just passing through but Remaining.

But notice how Jesus opens this passage:
"If you love me, you will keep my commandments." (John 14:15)
The gift of the Spirit is not given in a vacuum. It is given within a relationship of love and obedience between the disciple and the Lord. Jesus does not say if you perform all the rituals correctly or if you master all the theology. He says: if you love me.

And what does love look like? It keeps the commandments. Not out of fear or, as a legal transaction, but as the natural expression of a heart that has been won over. A child who loves a parent does not obey grudgingly; they want to please. A disciple who loves Christ does not find the commandments a burden; they find in them the shape of the life they were made for. 

This is important because it tells us something about the condition of our hearts as we prepare for Pentecost. The Holy Spirit is not poured into closed vessels. The Spirit comes where love is;  where there is a genuine desire to live for God, to follow Christ, to let go of the things that block His entry into our lives. As we approach Pentecost, the question to carry this week is not merely: Do I believe? But: Do I love? And does my love show?

Let us turn to our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, and notice something remarkable. Philip had gone down to Samaria and proclaimed the Christ. The people believed and were baptized. And yet something was still awaited:

"They had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid hands on them and they received the holy Spirit." (Acts 8:16–17)

What it reveals is this: from the very beginning, the gift of the Holy Spirit was understood as the heart of Christian initiation: the very goal of baptism itself.
When the Apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the Word of God, they sent Peter and John, the senior witnesses of the Resurrection  specifically to pray that the new believers would receive the Holy Spirit. This was not incidental. It was urgent. It was essential. And this connects directly to what Jesus promises in today's Gospel. He says: "I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate" (John 14:16). The giving of the Spirit comes through prayer, through asking. Jesus Himself intercedes with the Father., and the Church, following Christ's example, has always surrounded baptism with prayer precisely because she knows that the Spirit is a gift to be sought, invoked, implored. The Church has always understood baptism and the gift of the Spirit as bound together. 

Then, Jesus says something sobering about the Spirit of truth:

"the world cannot accept it, because it neither sees nor knows it" (John 14:17).

We live immersed in a world that operates by entirely different logic: the logic of power, of wealth, of self-promotion, of pleasure, of immediate gratification. That world has no category for the Holy Spirit. It cannot perceive the Spirit because it is not looking with the eyes of faith, not listening with the ears of love. The world cannot give what only God can give. The world offers comfort; the Spirit gives peace. The world offers distraction; the Spirit gives truth. The world offers belonging to a crowd; the Spirit makes us children of the Father. These are not the same things,  and only those who have tasted the Spirit know the difference.

Next Sunday we celebrate Pentecost. The great fifty days of Easter will reach their culmination. The Spirit who hovered over the waters of creation, who anointed the prophets and kings, who overshadowed Mary, who descended upon Jesus at the Jordan, who filled the Upper Room with wind and fire,  that same Spirit is poured out again and again, for each generation, for this generation, for us.
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But we must ask. We must prepare. We must open ourselves.

Ask: Lord, what do You want to do in me that I have not yet permitted?
Ask: Come, Holy Spirit.
Brothers and sisters, Jesus has made you a promise:

"I will not leave you orphans."

We are not alone, or abandoned. We are not left to find our own way through the confusion and darkness of this world. The Spirit of truth, the Spirit of the Risen Lord has been given to us, dwells in us, remains with us, at work in us, even now, even when we cannot feel it.

We were baptized into this. We were sealed with this. We have been fed week by week, renewed in this Spirit at every Eucharist. And yet there is always more. The Spirit is inexhaustible. The depths of God's love have no floor. So let us not be content with a Christianity of the shallows. Let us love Christ. Let us keep His commandments; not as a burden, but as the joy of those who are loved. Let us open ourselves, this week and always, to the One who was promised, who has been given, who is even now saying to each of us:

"I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you."

​Come, Holy Spirit. Come.

Peace.

Deacon Michel