20 May 2018
Pentecost Sunday
Today, the Easter season ends with the Lord’s promised sending of the Holy Spirit to guide us into the way of all truth. This Spirit is the Advocate who testifies to the Son and teaches us all things through Him. Why through the Son? Because the life that Jesus Christ lives among us as a man is the full and perfect revelation of God, since he is true God and true man. Through the Son God hides nothing from us and reveals everything. For this reason, Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit “will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears… he will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you” (Jn 15-16).
The Holy Spirit does not offer a new revelation but plunges us into God’s full revelation through Christ in a new way. That “new way,” however, fundamentally changes the way that we Christians relate to God and one another. Without theHoly Spirit we can know Jesus as a man, a model and example, a leader to follow, even a friend. And perhaps we might see this man as God’s representative, or even God himself (though without the help of the Holy Spirit, we could not rightly understand what sort of “god” this is). However, those who receive the Holy Spirit,who let themselves be guided (counseled) by it, no longer relate to Jesus extrinsicly as a mere other, however beloved that “other” might be. The Holy Spirit introduces the Christian into the reality of Christ’s very life so that we might live from no other life but from that divine life that Christ reveals and that the Father and the Son share with us through the Spirit. Through the Holy Spirit we receive the eternal life that consists in dwelling in God, and letting God dwell in us, so that the world might believe in the one true God and the Christ whom he has sent (Jn 17).