The advocate

It’s the sixth Sunday after Easter and our gospel reading today shifts to the third person in the Holy Trinity. In last Sunday’s gospel we read about the Last Supper Discourse and our Lord Jesus Christ was asked by his disciples to show them the Father and the Lord replied to them, “How can you say, ‘Show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you, I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works, Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe because of the works themselves.” 

This scripture teaching, which comes directly from our Lord Jesus Christ, is our best proof that God the Father dwells in the Son and when the Son speaks, it is really the Father speaking to us. Therefore the two divine persons are in one person. For today’s gospel, our Lord Jesus Christ speaks of the Advocate, the third person in the Blessed Trinity. You can read it in in your Bibles in John 14: 15-21.

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[Jesus said to his disciples’ 15 If you love me, you will keep my commandments.  16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, 17 the Spirit of Truth, which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it, because it remains with you, and will be in you.

18 I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. 19 In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me, because I live and you will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you. 21 Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”

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Today’s gospel is obviously linked to last Sunday’s Last Supper Discourse, which happened just before the Last Supper. It was our Lord’s way of telling his disciples who he really was. In Matthew 16: 19, when our Lord asked his disciples “Who do they think he was” and his disciples gave all sorts of answers, that he was Elijah or John the Baptist, but our Lord turned to Simon Peter who told our Lord, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” With Peter’s confession, our Lord replied and said, “Blessed are you Simon, son of Jonah for flesh and blood did not give that to you, but my Father in heaven.”

Up to this time, his disciples already believed that their Master is the Messiah, the one whom the prophets predicted that he would come to save Israel. But in the Last Supper Discourse, our Lord Jesus was now telling them something that that they are having some kind of difficulty believing, which is why Philip and Thomas both asked the Lord to show them the Father. For sure, our Lord must have told them already his relation with his Father, but when he told them that he is in the Father and the Father is in me, his disciples still found it hard to believe.

If you recall what happened on the road to Emmaus on Easter Sunday, when Cleofas and his friend were discussing about what happened to their Master in Jerusalem. And our Lord Jesus said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”

Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the scriptures.” Since it was getting dark, they invited them to supper and when he broke the bread, he vanished, and they rushed back to Jerusalem with a new fervor and hearts burning to inform their fellow disciples that they have seen the Lord. And more importantly, they finally understood what the whole salvific plan of God was all about — that the Messiah was sent to this world to save humanity and the chance to return to Paradise to be with God himself.

In the last paragraph, which I’d like to repeat here, our Lord said, “Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” As we already know… God gave Moses the Ten Commandments… and our Lord Jesus tells us that those of us who obey the Ten Commandments are the ones who love him.

Surely by now you also understand what our Lord Jesus is telling us. That the God who created us loves us despite our being sinners. To ensure that we do not lose our way, our Lord will send the Holy Spirit or the Advocate to dwell in each and every one of us. The Holy Spirit completes the Holy Trinity, which is still a mystery to many of us, but this is God himself as we have been taught and that there are three persons in one God.

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