My Dear People,

The Feast of Pentecost is the celebration of the official beginning of the Catholic Church. Since the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles on that Pentecost Sunday, He has been guiding the Church so that the Church will survive all the attacks of the evil one. As Jesus gave the keys to Peter and established the church on him, he told him that the forces of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. This is possible because it is the Holy Spirit who is guiding the Church. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Blessed Trinity, and He does the will of the Father and the Son totally and completely, so that the one who follows the Holy Spirit is following Christ. 

The Last Supper discourse (John 13-17) contains the largest section of Jesus’ teachings on the Holy Spirit in any of the Gospels, so the Church has been reading from this unit quite heavily during Easter, especially as the weeks draw close to Pentecost. 

There are several observations that we can make about this passage.

First of all, the Spirit that Christ sends to us is the “Spirit of truth.” The story is told of the little boy whose father asked him, “What is faith?” The boy answered, “It’s when you believe things that aren’t true.” That sums up the popular attitude toward the Christian faith in modern Western culture. Both people outside the Church and many inside as well, think the faith consists in clenching one’s teeth and believing things that are probably false. 

But that’s not the teaching of Jesus. Jesus taught what is true and taught us to seek the truth. It is not the Church but the culture that believes things that aren’t true.Years from now, in hindsight, everyone will recognize how many falsehoods our culture believes and holds onto with dogmatic certainty: that there’s no evidence for a God; that the baby in the womb isn’t a person; that all living things could come to be by random chance and natural laws; that there’s no such thing as sin; that sex outside of marriage has no negative consequences, etc. We live in a surreal world of brainwashing falsehood in which the truth of Christ seems odd and unrealistic. But the Gospel message is meant to lead us into the real world and out of the fantasies of contemporary culture. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, not fiction. 

Jesus says, “When he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you into all truth.” We have here an important teaching that leads ultimately to the doctrine of the infallibility of the Church. Jesus is speaking here not to individual Christians, but to the Apostles gathered as a body. They are the nucleus of the Church’s leadership, represented later by an ecumenical council, when the successors of the Apostles around the world gather together to reconstitute the Apostolic College. Christ promises the Spirit will lead the gathered Apostles “into the truth.” For this reason, we have confidence that when the Apostolic college is gathered, it will not err. If it did, then the Spirit would not have led them “into the truth.” Confidence in the Church is ultimately confidence in the Holy spirit. If the leaders of the whole Church, gathered together properly and in obedience to Christ, can err in doctrine, then we can really have very little confidence in the truth of our faith. So, we speak of the infallibility of an ecumenical council, taking a risky step of faith to believe that Jesus’ promise is true in an objective and tangible way. 

Secondly, “he will not speak on his own. . . he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.” This stresses the continuity between the ministry of Jesus and the ministry of the Spirit. The gift of the Spirit does not enable us to “surpass” the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth and “evolve” into some higher plane of spirituality. Throughout Church history, there have been various movements that have arisen—some of a conservative nature and some of a progressive—that have claimed that the Spirit has led them into insights that overturn the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, or the Gospel, or the Apostles. Some such movements have abandoned some or all of the sacraments, or the successors of the Apostles, or various moral teachings of Jesus and the Apostles. There’s more than a hint of it in the contemporary movement to change the Church’s teaching on marriage from what Jesus defined and St. Paul clarified. Some feel the Spirit is causing us to evolve into a higher state of truth. 

But the Spirit does not overturn the Gospel and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, and Son of David. This Jesus is God. The Spirit leads us deeper into understanding his teaching. He does not lead us to surpass or overturn it. There is a “hermeneutic of continuity” between Christ and the Spirit.

Thirdly, Jesu says, “you also testify.” And while that command has its immediate application to the Apostles themselves, nonetheless it also applies to the whole Church., We must testify to the truth of the faith in the middle of the culture that is founded on multiple falsehoods. The spirit gives us the power to do that, the power to understand more deeply the teaching of Christ, and also to proclaim it boldly. 

[Passages taken from Reflections on the Sunday Mass Readings by John Bergsma]

Yours in Christ, 

Fr Vincent Clemente