6th Sunday of Easter: Year A, 2017

May God bestow on you the necessary graces to prepare for the coming of the Holy Spirit. HappySunday! + John I. Okoye

DOCTRINE AND FAITH 
(Acts 8, 6-8.14-17; 1 Peter 3, 15-18; John 14, 15-21; 6th Sunday of Easter: Year A, 2017)

    The coming of the Holy Spirit is an important and focal event in the history of salvation and the raison d’etre of the work of Incarnation and Redemption.  At the discourse after the Last Supper, in today’s gospel reading, Jesus affirms: I will pray the Father and he will give you another Advocate who will stay with you forever, the Spirit of Truth. The Greek term parakletos,generally means helper. When Jesus said that he will send to his followers Another Paraclete he underlined his awareness of their weakness and how much they stood in need of divine empowerment. The Fall of Adam and Eve signalled rupture of friendship between man and God. By virtue of his incarnation, passion, death and resurrection, Jesus restored fallen humanity to the glory of divine friendship. Having paid the ultimate price to save man from damnation, Jesus promised a divine helper to the fallen but restored humanity- he Paraclete whose function it is, in the economy of salvation, to sanctify and empower. We need the Holy Spirit to help us speak to God and speak the truth to one another. We need him to help us to pray, witness to Christ, preach the gospel, resist evil, live holy lives, uproot and destroy wickedness in the world, build and plant kingdom values everywhere, love one another, administer the Church well, be patient in tribulation and worship God as it is fitting. Left on our own, we can really do nothing (John 15, 5). Jesus said that he would send us the Helper so that we would not be like orphans after his departure (John 14, 18). Orphans are people without help. His promise is that this Helper will be always with us. Nothing is consoling as this assurance of twenty-four-hours help of the Holy Spirit in all the moments and situations of our lives. The fact that the Holy Spirit comes to our help does not, in any way, imply that he has taken our freedom nor diminish our responsibility. We cannot fold our hands and wait for God to do our household chores, work in our farms and gardens, fix our political systems, eradicate corruption from our society, convert people by force, make us holy, train our children and make our marriages work. Unfortunately, it does not work that way. The Holy Spirit assists us to accomplish the will of God through the talents, abilities, gifts and powers he bestows on us. Therefore, our belief and reliance on the Holy Spirit should neither diminish nor destroy but enhance our readiness and willingness to work hard to improve our lives and make the world a better place.

    Jesus describes the Spirit as the Spirit of Truth. The Holy Spirit has the competence to illumine the disciples to fully understand the teachings of Jesus Christ. It is this Spirit that enabled the Church and individuals not to remain on the superficial level of things but also led them into the full revelation and understanding of the message of Christ. In the gospel passage, Jesus also points to the fact that the world does not know the Holy Spirit but that the disciples know him, because he is with you and in you.Here Jesus alludes to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the disciples. We first note that Jesus is able to dwell in the disciples because He is a Person. The Holy Spirit is not just an aspect or attribute of God. Likewise, he is not an instrument which God uses to do things in the world, but He is a divine person in the same way as the Father and the Son. While he works in union with the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit has a special role to play for the salvation of the world. It is important that we appreciate the personhood of the Holy Spirit because it is only then that we will be able to enter into personal relationship with him (the indwelling).  Being a person means that the Holy Spirit is capable of mutual relationship, loving and being loved, giving and receiving and other acts of a living subject. We should, therefore, go beyond the images we have of the Holy Spirit as dove, fire or cloud and begin to see the divine person represented by the images. May we also endeavour to begin cultivating intimate loving relationships with him.  The indwelling of the Spirit in the disciples is not exclusive. Jesus also indicates the mutual indwelling between him and the Father. This serves as a paradigm for the disciples to enter into relationship with him. But for this to be a reality, the disciples will have to demonstrate their love for Jesus by keeping his commandment. The keeping of the commandment is a sure sign of the love the disciples have for Jesus. Jesus assures the disciples that he will return to them. He will be in their presence again. He will be living the same divine life with his disciples that will dispose them to an interior and intimate life with Jesus. This interior and reciprocal living is mysterious, beautiful and expressive of perfect union with love. In simple practical terms it means: if one is docile to the Holy Spirit, the Spirit will lead him into an intimate union with Christ (the indwelling of the Christian with Christ). What happens next? Because, Christ is intimately united with God the Father, there are the chances that Christ (as a result of his intimate union with the disciple) will eventually lead the disciple into an intimate union with the Blessed Trinity.

    The Acts of the Apostles, which supplies the first reading of today, is a narrative describing how the Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirt, spread from Jerusalem to the ends of the then known world. She could not have done it without the power of the Holy Spirit, the Power of God. This divine power was promised by Jesus, shortly before he ascended into heaven:“It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1, 7-8; See also Luke 24,29).  These passages underline the role of the Holy Spirit as the giver of divine power. Philip, one of the deacons, moved by this divine power preached successfully in Samaria. The apostles Peter and John had to come down from Jerusalem. They imposed hand on the Samaritan Christians and they received the Holy Spirit. 

    We need divine power to be faithful followers of Christ and to accomplish the purpose of our creation and call. The Holy Spirit provides the power we need and he is the power himself. We are called to preach the gospel of Christ to the ends of the earth, to make disciples of all nations, and to get the whole world reconciled to God. That is why Peter, the Apostle, calls upon us in the second reading of today to be ready to provide reasons for the cheerfulness of Christians in the midst of sorrows, our hope in the face of misery and joys in difficulties. None of these will be easy for us without the help of the Holy Spirit. We need power to bear active and courageous witness of faith, love and hope to Christ in our time and place. 

    We are already invited by the liturgy of this Sunday, to reflect on the feast of Pentecost that is almost at the corner. We therefore, hope that the good Lord will not only bestow on us the gifts of the Holy Spirit, endow us with the power of the Spirit but also make it possible that we be led into and participate in several levels of intimate relationship (in-dwellings) with the Persons of the Blessed Trinity. Happy Sunday! +John I. Okoye

(graphics by blogger)