17 May 2023

Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Easter

Each of us, simply by the fact of our humanity, has a desire to know, love, and serve the Lord. God has placed this desire in each person’s heart, as Paul says in his speech in today’s first reading, creating us and ordering the world “so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and find him, though indeed he is not far from any one of us” (Acts 17:27). And if we look out on the world, we do see people groping for God in all sorts of ways: some grasp out at wealth or status, some look to the beauty of creation, some seek justice and fraternity among human beings; some acknowledge a deity, and some do not. Ultimately, all of us seek the one true God, revealed as Father, Son, and Spirit by the paschal mystery.

It is the Spirit who invisibly yet powerfully draws all humanity toward the revelation of the Father’s love in Christ. Thus Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “When he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth” (John 16:13). Today, we can ponder this hidden work of the Spirit, praying that all our hearts might be opened to the Spirit’s gentle pull, so that in the end, God might be all in all (1 Cor 15:28).