Fertilised by the Holy Spirit
Year A – Easter – 6th Sunday
John 14:15-21: “I shall ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete”
Two weeks of Eastertide remain. Next Sunday we shall celebrate the Ascension of the Lord, and on the following Sunday, Pentecost. The Word of God invites us to turn our gaze towards these appointments.
Today Jesus promises us the gift of the Spirit: “I shall ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete to be with you for ever, the Spirit of truth.” Jesus speaks five times of the sending of the Spirit in these farewell discourses. Four times he presents him as the “Paraclete”, a very rich Greek term indicating someone called to stand beside us to help us: a consoler, a defending advocate… Three times he describes him as the “Spirit of truth”.
Love, the “nest” of the Spirit
Jesus links the gift of the Holy Spirit to love: “If you love me…”. Love is the “nest” of the Spirit. The apostle Paul states: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22). All these qualities are connected with love.
Today’s Gospel passage highlights love — five times — but, surprisingly, here Jesus speaks of love for his own person. The love which, in the Old Testament, was reserved for God (Deuteronomy 6:4-9), Jesus now claims for himself. John’s Gospel concludes with a threefold request for a profession of love, in which Peter represents each one of us: “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” (John 21:17). What an honour God grants us by asking for our friendship! God has the heart of one in love!
Jesus states that love for him is shown in keeping his commandments: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Why does he speak of commandments in the plural? We may think that he is referring in general to his teachings to be cherished, but above all to the two inseparable dimensions of love: love of God and love of one’s brothers and sisters.
Love is the driving force of life. Saint Augustine said: “Let the root of love be within you, for from this root nothing but good can come. Love, and do what you will!” And the apostle Paul will say: “The love of Christ urges us on” (2 Corinthians 5:14).
“In”, the preposition of love
What draws our attention is Jesus’ insistence on the deep communion created by this love: a true mutual indwelling. “On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” Even though we find other expressions — “with you”, “beside you”, “among you” — the preferred one is “in you”, “in me”, “in the Father”. This preposition, in — ἐν, in Greek — occurs about 25 times in chapters 14 and 15, evoking deep intimacy, immanence and mutual indwelling.
Our heart is made to be inhabited. Indeed, to be fertilised. In every believer something of Mary’s mystery is renewed, she who “was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:18). Origen of Alexandria, one of the greatest theologians of the first centuries and a father of Christian biblical exegesis (185-253), offers us one of the most powerful images of Christian life: “The Christian, as long as he is in this body, is like a pregnant woman: he carries within himself the Word of God” (In Exodum X, 10). Just as a pregnant woman carries her child in her womb but does not yet see him face to face, so the Christian carries Christ within himself through grace, while still “walking by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). Tribulations, difficulties and death itself are the pangs of childbirth. The Christian lives in the world, among people, like a woman pregnant with new life. “And the pregnant woman does not need to make proclamations: it is evident to everyone that there is a new life within her. As for a pregnant woman waiting is the most alive, happiest and most creative period, so it is for us: alive, creative, happy; as the pregnant woman is one and two at the same time, living a life made up of two lives, so the Christian is one and two,” comments Fr Ermes Ronchi.
Learning from the mystics in love
Perhaps we have not sufficiently interiorised this astonishing and wonderful reality: we are God’s dwelling place, inhabited by God, bearers of a new life generated in us by the Holy Spirit. Often we think of God “with” us, “beside” us, or sometimes far away or absent, and we forget that he is “in” us.
The mystics, however, understood this well. I offer the example of a seventeenth-century French mystic: Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection (Laurent de la Résurrection), a lay brother in a monastery of the Discalced Carmelites in Paris. The spirituality he lived and taught was very simple: to cultivate the sense of God’s presence through “the continual practice of this divine presence”, at every moment and in every circumstance, first as a cook and then as a cobbler in a large convent with more than a hundred friars:
“In the bustle of my kitchen, where at times several people speak to me at once about different things, I possess God as tranquilly as if I were on my knees before the Blessed Sacrament. It is not necessary to have great things to do. I turn my omelette in the pan for love of God, and when I have finished it, if there is nothing else left for me to do, I bow down to the ground and adore my God, who has granted me the grace to make it; after which I rise more joyful than a king.”
Although he walked with a limp because of a war wound, Brother Lawrence — “rough by nature and delicate by grace”, according to Fénelon — was punctual and precise in his duties, showing no signs of impatience or haste… But…
“If at times I am a little too absent from this divine presence, God immediately makes himself felt in my soul… with inner movements so charming and so delightful that I am ashamed to speak of them.”
Turn the daily omelette of your life too: it will not always be perfect, but it can always be seasoned with love.
Fr Manuel João Pereira Correia, MCCJ
Fr. Manuel João, comboni missionary
Sunday Reflection
from the womb of my whale, ALS
Our cross is the pulpit of the Word
