From: Romans 8:8-17
Life in the Spirit
[9] But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God really
dwells in you. Any one who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong
to him. [10] But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of
sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness. [11] “If the Spirit of him who
raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the
dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit who dwells in you.”
[12] So then, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the
flesh—[13] for if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit
you put to death the deeds of the body you will live.
Christians Are Children of God
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Commentary:
10-11. Once he is justified the Christian lives in the grace of God and confidently
hopes in his future resurrection; Christ himself lives in him (cf. Gal 2:20; 1 Cor
15:20-23). However, he is not spared the experience of death, a consequence of
original sin (cf. Rom 5:12; 6:23). Along with suffering, concupiscence and other
limitations, death is still a factor after Baptism; it is something which motivates
us to struggle and makes us to be like Christ. Almost all commentators interpret
the expression “your bodies are dead because of sin” as referring to the fact that,
due to sin, the human body is destined to die. So sure is this prospect of death
that the Apostle sees the body as “already dead”.
St. John Chrysostom makes an acute observation: if Christ is living in the Chris-
tian, then the divine Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity, is also present in him.
If this divine Spirit is absent, then indeed death reigns supreme, and with it the
wrath of God, rejection of His laws, separation from Christ, and expulsion of our
Guest. And he adds: “But when one has the Spirit within, what can be lacking?
With the Spirit one belongs to Christ, one possesses Him, one vies for honor
with the angels. With the Spirit, the flesh is crucified, one tastes the delight of
an immortal life, one has a pledge of future resurrection and advances rapidly
on the path of virtue. This is what Paul calls putting the flesh to death” (”Hom.
on Rom.”, 13).
14-30. The life of a Christian is sharing in the life of Christ, God’s only Son. By
becoming, through adoption, true children of God we have, so to speak, a right
to share also in Christ’s inheritance – eternal life in heaven (vv. 13-18). This di-
vine life in us, begun in Baptism through rebirth in the Holy Spirit, will grow under
the guidance of this Spirit, who makes us ever more like Christ (vv. 14, 26-27).
So, our adoption as sons is already a fact – we already have the first fruits of the
Spirit (v. 23) – but only at the end of time, when our body rises in glory, will our
redemption reach its climax (vv. 23-25). Meanwhile we are in a waiting situation
– not free from suffering (v. 18), groans (v. 23) and weakness (v. 26) – a situation
characterized by a certain tension between what we already possess and are,
and what we yearn for. This yearning is something which all creation experien-
ces; by God’s will, its destiny is intimately linked to our own, and it too awaits
its transformation at the end of the world (vv. 19-22). All this is happening in ac-
cordance with a plan which God has, a plan established from all eternity which
is unfolding the course of time under the firm guidance of divine providence (vv.
28-30).
14-15 St. Josemaria Escriva taught thousands of people about this awareness
of divine filiation which is such an important part of the Christian vocation. Here
is what he says, for example, in The Way, 267: “We’ve got to be convinced that
God is always near us. We live as though he were far away, in the heavens high
above, and we forget that he is also continually by our side.
“He is there like a loving Father. He loves each of us more than all the mothers
in the world can love their children — helping, inspiring us, blessing . . . and for-
giving.
“How often we have misbehaved and then cleared the frowns from our parents’
brows, telling them: I won’t do it any more! — That same day, perhaps, we fall
again . . . — And our father, with feigned harshness in his voice and serious face,
reprimands us while in his heart he is moved, realizing our weakness and think-
ing: poor child, how hard he tries to behave well!
“We’ve got to be filled, to be imbued with the idea that our Father, and very much
our Father, is God who is both near us and in heaven.”
This awareness of God as Father was something which the first chancellor of
the University of Navarre experienced with special intensity one day in 1931:
“They were difficult times, from a human point of view, but even so I was quite
sure of the impossible — this impossibility which you can now see as an accom-
plished fact. I felt God acting within me with overriding force, filling my heart and
bringing to my lips this tender invocation — Abba! Pater! I was out in the street,
in a tram; being out in the street is no hindrance for our contemplative dialogue;
for us, the hustle and bustle of the world is a place for prayer” (St. J. Escrivá,
quoted in Bernal, p. 214).
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.
From: John 14:15-16, 23b-26
The Promise of the Holy Spirit
[23b] “If a man loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and
We will come to him and make Our home with him. [24] He who does not love
Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the
Father’s who sent Me.
[25] “These things I have spoken to you, while I am still with you. [26] But the
Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach
you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”
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Commentary:
15. Genuine love must express itself in deeds. “This indeed is love: obeying and
believing in the loved one” (St. John Chrysostom, “Hom. on St. John”, 74). There-
fore, Jesus wants us to understand that love of God, if it is to be authentic, must
be reflected in a life of generous and faithful self-giving obedient to the Will of God:
he who accepts God’s commandments and obeys them, he it is who loves Him
(cf. John 14:21). St. John himself exhorts us in another passage not to “love in
word or speech but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18), and he teaches us that
“this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments” (1 John 5:3).
16-17. On a number of occasions the Lord promises the Apostles that He will
send them the Holy Spirit (cf. 14:26; 15:36; 16:7-14; Matthew 10:20). Here He
tells them that one result of His mediation with the Father will be the coming of
the Paraclete. The Holy Spirit in fact does come down on the disciples after our
Lord’s ascension (cf. Acts 2:1-13), sent by the Father and by the Son. In promi-
sing here that through Him the father will send them the Holy Spirit, Jesus is
revealing the mystery of the Blessed Trinity.
“Consoler”: the Greek word sometimes anglicized as “paraclete” means etymo-
logically “called to be beside one” to accompany, to console, protect, defend.
Hence the word is translated as Consoler, Advocate, etc. Jesus speaks of the
Holy Spirit as “another Consoler”, because He will be given them in Christ’s
place as Advocate or Defender to help them, since Jesus is going to ascend to
Heaven. In 1 John 2:1 Jesus Christ is described as a Paraclete: “We have an ad-
vocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous”. Jesus Christ, then, also is
our Advocate and Mediator in Heaven where He is with the Father (cf. Hebrews
7:25). It is now the role of the Holy Spirit to guide, protect and vivify the Church,
“for there are, as we know, two factors which Christ has promised and arranged
in different ways to continue His mission [...]: the apostolate and the Spirit. The
apostolate is the external and objective factor, it forms the material body, so to
speak, of the Church and is the source of her visible and social structures. The
Holy Spirit acts internally within each person, as well as on the whole communi-
ty, animating, vivifying, sanctifying” (Paul VI, “Opening Address at the Third Ses-
sion of Vatican II”, 14 September 1964).
The Holy Spirit is our Consoler as we make our way in this world amid difficul-
ties and the temptation to feel depressed. “In spite of our great limitations, we
can look up to Heaven with confidence and joy: God loves us and frees us from
our sins. The presence and the action of the Holy Spirit in the Church are a fore-
taste of eternal happiness, of the joy and peace for which we are destined by
God” (St. J. Escriva, “Christ Is Passing By”, 128).
22-23. It was commonly held by the Jews that when the Messiah came He
would be revealed to the whole world as King and Savior. The Apostles take Je-
sus’s words as a revelation for themselves alone, and they are puzzled. Hence
the question from Judas Thaddeus. It is interesting to note how easy the Apos-
tles’ relations with our Lord are: they simply ask Him about things they do not
know and get Him to clear up any doubts they have. This is a good example of
how we should approach Jesus, who is also our Teacher and Friend.
Jesus’ reply may seem evasive but in fact, by referring to the form His manifesta-
tion takes, He explains why He does not reveal Himself to the world: He makes
Himself known to him who loves Him and keeps His commandments. God repea-
tedly revealed Himself in the Old Testament and promised to dwell in the midst
of the people (cf. Exodus 29:45; Ezekiel 37:26-27; etc.); but here Jesus speaks
of a presence of God in each person. St. Paul refers to this presence when he
asserts that each of us is a temple of the Holy Spirit (cf. 2 Corinthians 6:16-17).
St. Augustine, in reflecting on God’s ineffable nearness in the soul, exclaims,
“Late have I loved You, O Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved You!
You were within me, and I was in the world outside myself. I searched for You
in the world outside myself.... You were with me, but I was not with You. The
beautiful things of this world kept me far from You and yet, if they had not been
in You, they would have no being at all. You called me; You cried aloud to me;
You broke my barrier of deafness; You shone upon me; Your radiance enve-
loped me; You cured my blindness” (”Confessions”, X, 27, 38).
Jesus is referring to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the soul renewed by grace:
“Our heart now needs to distinguish and adore each one of the Divine Persons.
The soul is, as it were, making a discovery in the supernatural life, like a little
child opening his eyes to the world about him. The soul spends time lovingly with
the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and readily submits to the work of the
lifegiving Paraclete, who gives Himself to us with no merit on our part, bestowing
His gifts and the supernatural virtues!” (St. J. Escriva, “Friends of God”, 306).
25-26. Jesus has expounded His teaching very clearly, but the Apostles do not
yet fully understand it; they will do so later on, when they receive the Holy Spirit
who will guide them unto all truth (cf. John 16:13). “And so the Holy Spirit did
teach them and remind them: He taught them what Christ had not said because
they could not take it in, and He reminded them of what the Lord had taught and
which, either because of the obscurity of the things or because of the dullness
of their minds, they had not been able to retain” (Theophylact, “Enarratio in Evan-
gelium Ioannis, ad loc”).
The word translated here as “bring to your remembrance” also includes the idea
of “suggesting”: the Holy Spirit will recall to the Apostles’ memory what they had
already heard Jesus say—and He will give them light to enable them to discover
the depth and richness of everything they have seen and heard. Thus, “the Apos-
tles handed on to their hearers what He had said and done, but with that fuller
understanding which they, instructed by the glorious events of Christ (cf. John
2:22) and enlightened by the Spirit of truth, now enjoyed: (Vatican II, “Dei Ver-
bum”, 19).
“Christ has not left His followers without guidance in the task of understanding
and living the Gospel. Before returning to His Father, He promised to send His
Holy Spirit to the Church: ‘But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father
will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remem-
brance all I have said to you’” (John 14:26).
“This same Spirit guides the successors of the Apostles, your bishops, united
with the Bishop of Rome, to whom it was entrusted to preserve the faith and to
‘preach the Gospel to the whole creation’ (Mark 16:15). Listen to their voices,
for they bring you the word of the Lord” (John Paul II, “Homily at Knock Shrine”
30 September 1979).
In the Gospels is consigned to writing, under the charism of divine inspiration,
the Apostles’ version of everything they had witnessed—and the understanding of
it, which they obtained after Pentecost. So it is that these sacred writers “faithful-
ly hand on what Jesus, the Son of God, while He lived among men, really did and
taught for their eternal salvation, until the day when He was taken up (cf. Acts 1:
1-2)” (Vatican II, “Dei Verbum”, 19). This is why the Church so earnestly recom-
mends the reading of Sacred Scripture, particularly the Gospels. “How I wish
your bearing and conversation were such that, on seeing or hearing you, people
would say: This man reads the life of Jesus Christ” (St. J. Escriva, “The Way”,
2).
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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.
Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.