Gospel: John 14:15–21
15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.
18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
John 14:15–21 ESV – Bible Gateway
This section from the Gospel of John is from the Farewell Discourse at the Last Supper.
Peter Kreeft offers a necessary corrective to the idea that the law, in the sense of the Commandments, binds us in a loveless manner.
First point: love and law are usually thought to be opposites. The Pharisees were loveless legalists. Obeying the laws—all the laws—was their thing, and their only thing. Jesus is often seen as the opposite: pro-love and anti-law. That’s a mistake. He was anti-legalism but not anti-law. He said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Love is not first of all a feeling; it is a willing, a choice. That’s why love itself is commanded by Christ. You can’t command a feeling. How silly it would be to say, “I command you to feel sweet feelings of compassion or desire or concern for me.” To love God is simply to say, “Thy will be done,” and mean it, and live it. And that will of God for us is expressed by laws, by commandments.
…
Love brings us “in” to the other without losing our own identity. Human love in that way is an image of the love that holds God together in the Trinity. Love is the spiritual equivalent of “the strong nuclear force” in physics that holds all the matter in the universe together.[1]
Antinomianism and the idea that just as long as we “love” it then released us from observing the natural law seems especially strong now. This view often sees the commandments as just positive law that can change with the times.
Jesus comforts his disciples by further telling them of the Comforter, along with revealing more deeply the inner mystery of the Trinity.
The Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture for the Gospel of John notes:
Jesus promises that once he has entered into heavenly glory, I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always. This is the first of five promises about the Holy Spirit—the Advocate or Paraclete—made by Jesus in the Farewell Discourse. The Spirit is another Advocate because Jesus is also “an Advocate with the Father” (1 John 2:1). The Paraclete is the Spirit of truth because he is the Spirit of Jesus, who is “the truth” (14:6), the revelation of God. While distinct from Jesus, the Spirit does not operate independently of him (16:13–15). Since the world does not receive Jesus (see sidebar on p. 37), the world cannot accept or receive the Spirit, who abides with Jesus (1:33). The world neither sees nor knows the Spirit because the world does not see or know the truth about Jesus by faith. The disciples, however, have some openness to Jesus in faith, which in turn disposes them to the Spirit. Jesus promises that the Spirit remains with and will be in his disciples. Through the Spirit, God comes to dwell in the hearts of Jesus’ disciples, much as the Father dwells in Jesus and Jesus dwells in the Father (14:11).[2]
and
The word translated in the NABRE as “Advocate” is the Greek word paraklētos, represented in English as Paraclete. The term comes from a verb meaning “to call to one’s side,” as with the Latin term advocatus, hence “Advocate.” The background for this term is the Greco-Roman courtroom. A paraclete was someone who could provide help and assistance to a person in a trial setting: give counsel, plead that person’s cause, intercede with the judge. The courtroom background for this term fits with the Gospel’s running themes of trial and judgment. As the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit serves as a counselor for the disciples. He will give comfort and help to the disciples when the hostile, unbelieving world persecutes them (14:16–17; 15:26). Dwelling in the disciples, he will lead them to a deeper understanding of Jesus (14:26; 16:12–15) and enable them to bear witness to him (15:26–27). The Spirit also serves as a prosecutor against the world, for he will prove to the disciples that the world is wrong about “sin and righteousness and condemnation” (16:8).[3]
From the Catechism:
§729 Only when the hour has arrived for his glorification does Jesus promise the coming of the Holy Spirit, since his Death and Resurrection will fulfill the promise made to the fathers. The Spirit of truth, the other Paraclete, will be given by the Father in answer to Jesus’ prayer; he will be sent by the Father in Jesus’ name; and Jesus will send him from the Father’s side, since he comes from the Father. The Holy Spirit will come and we shall know him; he will be with us for ever; he will remain with us. The Spirit will teach us everything, remind us of all that Christ said to us and bear witness to him. The Holy Spirit will lead us into all truth and will glorify Christ. He will prove the world wrong about sin, righteousness, and judgment.[4]
Bishop Barron remarks on this passage:
Jesus promises to send us the Spirit of truth who will make us intimate friends of God. The Holy Spirit is the love shared by the Father and the Son. We have access to this holy heart of God only because the Father sent the Son into the world, into our dysfunction, even to the limits of godforsakenness and thereby gathered all of the world into the dynamism of the divine life.
Those who live in Christ are not outside of God as petitioners or supplicants; rather, they are in God as friends, sharers in the Spirit. And this spiritual life is what gives us knowledge of God—a knowledge, if you will, from within.
When the great masters of the Christian way speak of knowing God, they do not use the term in its distanced, analytical sense; they use it in the biblical sense, implying knowledge by way of personal intimacy. This is why St. Bernard of Clairvaux, for one, insists that initiates in the spiritual life know God not simply through books and lectures but through experience, the way one friend knows another. That knowledge is what the Holy Spirit facilitates.[5]
Sources
- Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings Cycle A
- The Gospel of John (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture)
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Edition
- The Word on Fire Bible (Volume 1)꞉ The Gospels
- Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
- Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings Cycle A, Sixth Sunday of Easter ↩
- Francis Martin, William M. Wright IV, The Gospel of John (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture) ↩
- ibid ↩
- Catholic Church. (2000). Catechism of the Catholic Church (2nd Ed). United States Catholic Conference. Paragraph 729 ↩
- The Word on Fire Bible (Volume 1)꞉ The Gospels ↩
