ON THESE INTERVENING SUNDAYS leading to the Ascension and Pentecost we look at the period of transition between the death of Jesus and the transformation that took place among his disciples. From being fearful fugitives they became fearless champions of the Living Jesus, committed to carrying on the work he had started.
Today’s Gospel picks up where last Sunday left off. The context again is the Last Supper. Jesus is preparing his disciples for his coming suffering and death but also for his Resurrection and Ascension when he will still be with them but in a very different way from now.
The new commandment
“If you love me you will keep my commandments,” Jesus says to them. The important word here is “my”. Jesus is not speaking of “the”, the traditional, Ten Commandments. These belong to the Hebrew Testament. They are still valid, of course, but Jesus goes beyond them. He made this clear in the Sermon on the Mount. He says categorically that he has not come to do away with the Jewish law or the teaching of the prophets but rather to fulfil their inner potential. “You have heard it said… but I say…“
Jesus’s “commandments” are on a different level. It his HIS commandments we are to keep. What are these commandments of his? Really, there is only one and that is the commandment to love: to love God with all our heart and soul, and to love others as we love ourselves, to love others as Jesus loves us, as he loves the sinner, as he love his enemies.
They include commands to recognise Jesus in the most needy, in the poor, in the sick, in the marginalised, even in the criminal (“I was in prison…”). They include commandments to be agents of healing and reconciliation in a broken and divided world.
There is nothing explicitly about any of this in the Ten Commandments. A good Christian is not just a law-abiding person taking care of oneself. He/she is a loving, caring person reaching out to others in love and service.
Depressed disciples
As we saw in last Sunday’s Gospel, the disciples are rather depressed that Jesus is going to leave them. Today he reassures them that they will not be left alone. They will certainly need help to keep those commandments of Jesus.
“I shall ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate to be with you for ever, the Spirit of truth.” The word translated ‘Advocate’ here is in Greek parakletos, from which comes ‘Paraclete’ in our older translations of the Bible. It is not an easy word to render in English because it has a number of different meanings in different contexts.
In general, it refers to a person who comes to stand by us and protect and gives us support. It can refer to a defence lawyer in a court of law, or an expert who comes in to solve a problem. It is a person who gives us courage to face great difficulties or a person who comforts us in difficult situations.
So it has the combined meanings of Helper, Advocate, Protector, Comforter, Consoler…
The Bearer of Truth
All the above meanings are applicable to the Spirit of truth that Jesus promises to send on his disciples to be with them in all the trials they and the Church will face. He is the Spirit of truth, not in a narrow dogmatic sense, but in the sense that he communicates a vision of life that is totally in harmony with the vision of God himself and of Jesus. He is a Spirit who not only informs the mind but guides us in all our decisions and actions and relationships.
He is, says Jesus, a Spirit that the ‘world’ (kosmos) cannot receive. The secularised ‘world’, in this sense, is blind to such truth and cannot recognise Him. Jesus’ disciples, however, are different. “But you know him, because he is with you, he is in you.” Only those with the vision that faith gives can recognise the presence of the Spirit around them and within them.
Faith is a mysterious gift. It is a privilege to have received it but it also brings with it great responsibilities. Those responsibilities can be summed up in living our lives in accordance with the commandments of Jesus already mentioned.
Leaving and returning
Although they cannot understand it in their present depressed mood, Jesus is saying it is better for them that he go away. Right now, he can only be present to them through the limitations of his human body. He can only be in one place at a time.
After his resurrection-exaltation, he will be with them in a completely new way. This will happen through his new Body, the Church, the community of disciples. Through this Body he can be everywhere in the world and at all times. The life-source of that Body is the Spirit of the Father and Jesus, the Son. Through his Spirit (also the Spirit of the Father) Jesus continues to be really present in his Body, the Church. And he is right here, working in us and through us.
As often as love and compassion are shown to the most needy of the human community, Jesus is both loving and serving and being personally served and loved. He is also the Cosmic Christ, “for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth – all things were created through him and for him“.
One with Jesus
That is what Jesus means when he says that “you will understand that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you“. It is through “keeping my commandments” that our union with him, with the Father and through the Spirit is made real and effective and becomes a genuine lived experience.
We can know by personal experience that “anybody who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I shall love him and show myself to him.” One gets the impression that, for far too many Christians, their “religion” is felt as a burden and that virtue consists in sticking with something that is both boring and far from being a source of joy, satisfaction and liberation.
The good disciple is much more than someone who, out of a dogged sense of duty, just avoids personal sin and tries to stay in the “state of grace”. When we truly become loving persons to both friend and enemy, to family and strangers, we know that the Spirit of Jesus is living within and transforming us. Then, in the words of Jesus, we can see and, because we can see, we are fully alive.