Second Reading – Galatians 5.16-25
Brothers and sisters, live by the Spirit
and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh.
For the flesh has desires against the Spirit,
and the Spirit against the flesh;
these are opposed to each other,
so that you may not do what you want.
But if you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
Now the works of the flesh are obvious:
immorality, impurity, lust, idolatry,
sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy,
outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness,
dissensions, factions, occasions of envy,
drinking bouts, orgies, and the like.
I warn you, as I warned you before,
that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
In contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
Against such there is no law.
Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified their flesh
with its passions and desires.
If we live in the Spirit,
let us also follow the Spirit.
Gospel – John 15.26-27; 16.12-15
Jesus said to his disciples:
“When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father,
the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father,
he will testify to me.
And you also testify,
because you have been with me from the beginning.
“I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.
But when he comes, the Spirit of truth,
he will guide you to all truth.
He will not speak on his own,
but he will speak what he hears,
and will declare to you the things that are coming.
He will glorify me,
because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.
Everything that the Father has is mine;
for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine
and declare it to you.”
Commentary
THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH
Five
times during this final discourse with his disciples Jesus promises the gift of
the Spirit as their helper; and on several occasions he refers to it as the
Advocate, (translate: the one called to accompany them and never leave them):
“And 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” (Jn
14.16-17)…
“The
Advocate, the holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name—he will teach you
everything and remind you of all that [I] told
you"(Jn 14.26)…
“When
the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth
that proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me. And you also testify,
because you have been with me from the beginning” (from today's text - Jn 15.26-27)…
“But I tell you the
truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not
come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you”(Jn 16.7)… “But
when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth. He will not
speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears, and will declare to you the
things that are coming” (Jn 16.13).
If
Jesus repeatedly insists on the gift of the Spirit it is to comfort his
disciples at this time of his departure; from now on they will be the ones on
the firing line, and Jesus alerts them to this: “I have told you this
so that you may not fall away. They will
expel you from the synagogues; in fact, the hour is coming when everyone who
kills you will think he is offering worship to God.
They
will do this because they have not known either the Father or
me.
I
have told you this so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told
you”
(Jn 16.1-4). Jesus knows
that his followers will not be treated differently from him: those who wanted
his death sincerely believed that by removing a blasphemer they were acting in
the name of God. In his Passion Narrative, Saint John reports that “The
Jews answered (Pilate), “We have a law, and
according to that law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of
God” (Jn
19.7).
This
terrible misunderstanding always surprises us: that those who defended God
crucified God’s own Son. In turn, the Son’s disciples will also be persecuted
and eliminated one after the other in the name of true religion. They will need
the support of the Spirit of truth, whom John calls the Advocate, the Defender;
but let us be clear: it is not a matter of defending Jesus’ followers against
God’s judgment, but rather of assisting them when they are brought before human
tribunals so that they can authentically witness to Christ. Jesus defined his
own vocation as witnessing to the truth; before Pilate he says, “For this I was born
and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth” (Jn 18.37).
Likewise the disciples have no other purpose than to bear witness to Christ so
that the world will know the truth of the Father.
THE
GIFT TO THE BELIEVERS IS TO MAKE THEM TRUE WITNESSES
The
definitive Covenant between God and humanity will be established only when
humanity finally knows God as God truly is. The terrible misunderstanding of
which I spoke earlier, caused by humanity’s ignorance of God is a problem that
runs throughout the Bible: from Adam’s suspicion in the Garden of Eden when he
imagines that God envies him, to the people’s suspicion in the desert of Sinai
when in their thirst they blame God for having brought them out of Egypt, and
all the way to the crucifixion of the Son of God because he does not meet the
expectations of his contemporaries, it is always the same ignorance. The
prophets tried in vain to alert the people: “Hear,
O heavens, and listen, O earth, for the LORD speaks: Sons have I raised and
reared, but they have rebelled against me!
An ox
knows its owner, and an ass, its master’s manger; But Israel does not know, my
people has not understood” (Is
1.2-3).
But
God did not give up; God knows that humanity cannot discover the Wholly Other on
its own; so God will intervene, as Jeremiah says: “I
will give them a heart to know me, that I am the LORD. They shall be my people
and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole
heart” (Jer
24.7).
That
should enlighten all our efforts at knowing God: because God is the Wholly
Other, it is impossible to reach God through our efforts alone, and so it is God
who comes to us and reveals Godself. That is why we are given God’s Spirit, the
first gift given to believers so that by their testimony the world can come to
know the truth of God.
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Addendum
It
is interesting to compare Peter’s words during the election of Matthias in the
Acts of the Apostles (“it is
necessary that one of the men who accompanied us the whole time the Lord Jesus
came and went among us, beginning from
the baptism of John until the day on which he was taken up from us, become with
us a witness to his resurrection”
Acts 1.20) with those of
Jesus during his final discourse: “And
you also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning” (Jn 15.27).
Translated with
permission by Simone Baryliuk, from: Commentaires de Marie Noëlle Thabut,
24 mai, 2015
http://www.eglise.catholique.
