Sunday 25th May. John 14:15-21 "he will not leave us orphans. He has asked the Father to give us ‘another Advocate to be with us always, the Spirit of truth’."

Banners of Templars procession
 - St. Andrew, Cistercian

6^th Sunday of Easter (A)

Mass Homily,  – Fr. Aelred

In the latter part of Easter Season we move from the accounts of the resurrection appearances to meditation upon the continued presence of the exalted Christ with his Church through the Spirit. In the 1^st reading from the Acts of the Apostles we see that the Church is a community in which the Spirit is given and shared! When the Gospel is preached in Samaria it is important that the Samaritans remain in union with the mother Church in Jerusalem where Christ’s Passover was accomplished. And in the Gospel we see that the communion with the risen Christ, and through Him with the Father, is in fact a Trinitarian experience. Sometimes this is an ecstatic experience, though not always; but keeping the commandments is the touchstone of the love of Christ and the indwelling of the Spirit.

The Church makes frequent use of St. John’s Gospel during Eastertide. Nor is this accidental. St. John has been described as ‘he who knows the secrets’. St John seems to penetrate more deeply into the mystery of Jesus than do other parts of Scripture. He tells us that the man Jesus, whom we have seen in the first three Gospels performing miracles and speaking in parables, thereby causing controversy, is at the same tome the very Word of God. Jesus’ divinity is shown more clearly in St. John than elsewhere. Armed with this deeper insight into who Jesus really is we can re-read the other Gospels and indeed the whole of the NT with greater profit and penetration.

St. John tells us that his purpose in writing his Gospel was that his readers might ‘believe that Jesus is the Christ, the, the Son of God, and believing have life in his name’. This purpose is not fundamentally different from that of the other Gospel writers, but many people through the centuries have found in John’s Gospel a favoured means of perceiving the Spirit’s active presence.

In today’s Reading from St. John, Jesus tells us he will not leave us orphans. He has asked the Father to give us ‘another Advocate to be with us always, the Spirit of truth’. Invisible to human eyes, but perceptive with the eyes of faith, the Advocate allows the disciples to believe without having seen. And to recognize that the Lord is in his Father, that we are in him, and he in us.

It is through our life in the same Spirit that we can enter more deeply into the secrets of the Fourth Gospel and live by it’s faith.