Daily Gospel Reflection – Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Easter
Bishop Robert Barron
May 17, 2023
Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Easter
Gospel: Jn 16:12-15
Jesus said to his disciples:
"I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.
But when he comes, the Spirit of truth,
he will guide you to all truth.
He will not speak on his own,
but he will speak what he hears,
and will declare to you the things that are coming.
He will glorify me,
because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.
Everything that the Father has is mine;
for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine
and declare it to you."
*United States Conference of Catholic
Bishop Robert Barron
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit to guide the Church through time. “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth.”
Since Jesus is the Son is God, it is impossible for us adequately to interpret him through our own powers of perception. We require a divine pedagogue through which the speech of the Father is to be understood. This is the advocate we call the Holy Spirit.
The words of today’s Gospel are almost unbearably profound, for they speak not only of the inner life of God but of the central dynamic of the Church’s life. The Father indeed spoke the fullness of his life, being, and truth in the Son, but the Church, in its earliest days, was incapable of taking that fullness in.
What was (and still is) required is the ongoing influence of the Spirit, the divine interpreter of the Word, who does his work gradually and powerfully as the Church journeys across space and time.
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