20 April 2020
Monday of the Second Week of Easter
The Church’s liturgy offers readings from the gospel of John during Lent and then again during Easter, whereas for most of the rest of the liturgical year, our gospel readings come primarily from Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Why repeat John during Easter if we got a good dose of John during Lent? Jesus’s promise at the Last Supper in John 14:26 offers a hint: “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.”
After the resurrection of Christ, we are invited to see all things in a new way, and it is precisely in that new vision that the Holy Spirit, during this Easter season, “remind us of all that Jesus told us.” So we hear the same scriptures, but with new ears, because now upon hearing these things again, the Holy Spirit “teaches us everything” by “reminding us” of all that Jesus proclaims through his life. It is for this reason that we ought to read scripture even if we do not understand it. If we have not heard it without understanding, how can the Holy Spirit later remind us of it and teach us all things through it?
The understanding that the Holy Spirit offers is not one that we would ever have arrived at on our own. Rather, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we are, daily, offered a new life, a new birth, for “unless one is born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God” (cf. Jn 3:1-8). Let us ask for this grace so that we might welcome the Holy Spirit who reminds us of all that Jesus has told us and so teaches us all things.