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.
These readings are for the day of the feast itself:
| First reading | Acts 2:1-11 © |
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| Psalm | Psalm 103:1,24,29-31,34 © |
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| Second reading | 1 Corinthians 12:3-7,12-13 © |
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| Second reading | Romans 8:8-17 © |
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| Gospel Acclamation |
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| Gospel | John 20:19-23 © |
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| Gospel | John 14:15-16,23-26 © |
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