A Gift Even “Better” Than Jesus Himself?, Sixth Tuesday of Easter, May 11, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, New York, NY
Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter
May 11, 2021
Acts 16:22-34, Ps 138, Jn 16:5-11

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today in the Gospel Jesus says something truly shocking, something that is one of the most important things ever said about the Holy Spirit: “I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.” Jesus is basically declaring that if we have a choice between Him and the Holy Spirit, we should choose the latter. That’s how important he says the Holy Spirit is. The great joy is that we don’t have to have to choose between the two. It is crucial, however, for us to ponder the role of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life and to examine whether we’re docile to the help He wants to give us to live by faith.
• The Holy Spirit remains the “great unknown” not just in the life of so many of the Christian faithful. Next Monday we will encounter the scene in the Acts of the Apostles when St. Paul came to Ephesus and met some disciples. He asked, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?” They responded, “We have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” Pope-emeritus Benedict, at World Youth Day in Australia in 2008, said, “The Holy Spirit has been in some ways the neglected person of the Blessed Trinity,” and confessed that it was only as a young priest teaching theology that he began not only to recognize the importance that the Holy Spirit should play in his life as a priest and professor but that he came to know him intimately. He added, “It is not enough to know the Spirit; we must welcome Him as the guide of our souls, as the ‘Teacher of the interior life’ who introduces us to the Mystery of the Trinity, because He alone can open us up to faith and allow us to live it each day to the full.” And we don’t have to be a member of the Charismatic Renewal to allow the Holy Spirit to become that teacher and guide. If we wish to understand the faith, if we wish to live it, if we wish to pass it on, we must allow ourselves to be led by the Holy Spirit, even if we, like Joseph Ratzinger, are beginning as adults. For us, the “great unknown” must become the “great known,” the teacher, the leader, the consoler, the advocate.
• The importance of the Holy Spirit in our life as Catholics cannot be overstated. Jesus tells us this in today’s Gospel when he emphasized that it was good that he left us because in comparison with the gift of His ongoing recognizably physical presence, the gift of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our life is more important. That’s how crucial the Holy Spirit is meant to be in our life as disciples and apostles. Benedict told the Church down under, “The Holy Spirit is the highest gift of God to mankind.”
• As Catholics, especially as we prepare for the decenarium of the Holy Spirit that will begin in two days on the Ascension, we need to ask ourselves how should we be seeking to grow in our docility to this highest gift of God?
• Jesus in the Gospel today says about the Holy Spirit that “when he comes he will convict the world in regard to sin and righteousness and condemnation: sin, because they do not believe in me; righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will no longer see me; condemnation, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.” We learn three very important works of the Holy Spirit, among others:
  • He will convict the world with regard to sin. Sin, Jesus says, is ultimately the failure to believe in him. The Holy Spirit not only convicts us of our failure to make Jesus the foundation of our life but at the same time helps us to grow in faith, to trust in Jesus totally and therefore what he says and does and calls us to.
  • He will convict the world with regard to righteousness, and righteousness is not fundamentally our work but God’s, it’s “Jesus’ going to the Father,” it’s Jesus holiness in communion with the Father. Our justification is our incorporation into Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit, not just later but now. That’s what the Holy Spirit seeks to do.
  • He will convict the world with regard to condemnation. Condemnation is not principally our eternal self-alienation through trusting in sin more than in God; it’s the condemnation of the evil one. The Holy Spirit wants to help us join in that condemnation by helping us to reject Satan, all his evil works and empty promises, and insofar as Christ came into the world to save not condemn the world, to help us enter into our salvation.
• We see this three-fold work at play in today’s first reading.
  • With regard to failing to make God in Jesus the foundation of one’s life, we see it in what led to today’s passage, where there was a young possessed slave girl in Philippi who was being used by what could only be called pimps there to do diabolical divinations. They were basing their life on cooperating with the devil and on the money that the devil was providing. This girl was following Paul and Silas and constantly saying, over the course of “many days,” “These people are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” After “many days,” Paul turned and said to the demons within her, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her,” and she was exorcised. It’s no surprise that those who do not make Jesus the foundation of their life are liable to using those made in his image.
  • In relation to righteousness, Paul and Silas were living confident in God’s providence even in the midst of their sufferings. After they had been brutally beaten with rods and locked limb to limb in the innermost jail cell for doing the exorcism, it would have been easy for them to lick and nurse their wounds, as their jailer eventually would do after the earthquake. It would have been easy for them to have been bitter. It would have been tempting for them to just go to sleep and end what to some might have been a nightmare of a day. But instead, because they were filled with the Holy Spirit, they were “praying and singing hymns to God as the prisoners listened.” They were praising God in joyful song. The Holy Spirit came to the aid of their weakness and was helping them to pray as they ought. Earlier in the Acts of the Apostles, after Saints Peter and John had suffered flogging on account of the name of Jesus and for a miracle they did for a cripple, they were together with the other members of the Church praying, not to be removed from danger, but that they might be able to proclaim the Gospel with all boldness (parrhesia). And St. Luke tells us that the place where they were praying shook. Today we see as Paul and Silas were praying, how the Holy Spirit shook the place they were praying!
  • With regard to condemning the evil one, we could of course look at the exorcism they celebrated, but we can also see how Paul and Silas cooperated with the Holy Spirit in defeating the evil one, his works and his empty promises. When their jailor was about to take his own life because whenever prisoners had escaped it was the jailor who would have to suffer the penalty of an escaped convict — namely death — Paul knew by the power of the Holy Spirit just what to say to him to bring him from the point of death to the threshold of life. “Do no harm to yourself; we are all here,” St. Paul said. From giving into the temptation of the evil one to commit suicide, he now rushed in asking, “What must I do to be saved?,”and  they gave him the simplest RCIA itinerary imaginable: “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you and your household will be saved.” He did, as did his family, and they all received the same Holy Spirit.
• The Holy Spirit, the greatest gift of God Most High, the one who convicts us about sin, justice and judgment, comes to us at every Mass. We begin Mass by examining all the ways we have not based our existence on Jesus. We seek to unite ourselves to Jesus as we seeks to take us to the Father. And we join in his triumph over the devil. The Holy Spirit seeks to perfect these works at every Mass. Just as he overshadowed Mary at the Annunciation, so he overshadows the altar and the priest at the consecration to transform bread and wine into the eternal Son of God incarnate. And so he overshadows the Church to make us one body, one Spirit in Christ. Pope Benedict said in  Australia, “The Eucharist is a ‘perpetual Pentecost’ since every time we celebrate Mass we receive the Holy Spirit who unites us more deeply with Christ and transforms us into Him.” Today we turn to the Holy Spirit, the “better part,” and pray: “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in us the fire of your love!” Amen!

The readings for today’s Mass were:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download