Sunday in the 11th Week of Ordinary Time

John 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.”

“I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.”  The Lord Jesus is speaking during the Last Supper.  In the course of the meal he has taught the Apostles about the Father’s love for him as his only-begotten Son, about what must happen to him, that he is leaving them though he will come back to them, and about the Holy Spirit.  The Apostles, for their part, are already  overwhelmed.  Jesus was not acting or speaking as they expected the Messiah to do.  And now he was saying to them that he had “much more” to tell them.  In his words there is an eagerness, a powerful desire to impart what they must know, but he holds himself back.  So many times in the Gospels Jesus is shows as painfully restraining himself, putting the Father’s will first.  Perhaps the most moving come when the Lord is gazing upon Jerusalem as he approaches it for the last time: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered together your children, as the hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you would not?” (Matthew 23, 37).  

He restrains himself for the present but will reveal all things to them after he rises from the dead and they begin to understand what it means that he is the Son of God — not the restorer of David’s kingdom but the Savior of the world.  Even then, they will hear but not understand.  Therefore, “the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth.”  They have the experience of the Lord teaching them so that they know the truth, and then the Holy Spirit confirms it and gives them the ability to understand it.  Jesus reveals the mission of the Holy Spirit to the Church in one sentence: “He will not speak on his own, but he will speak what he hears, and will declare to you the things that are coming.”  The Holy Spirit, in the unity of the Holy Trinity, speaks the words of the Father from whom he proceeds, teaching what is necessary for the Church to believe and to do.  

He will also teach “the things that are coming” so that the Church can interpret the signs of the times.  The Lord Jesus criticized the Pharisees and Sadducees, saying, “You know then how to discern the face of the sky: and can you not know the signs of the times?” (Matthew 16, 3).  They did not recognize the Son of God when he came because he did not fit in with their notions of what he would be like.  But the Church strongly desires to do God’s holy will and so the Holy Spirit teaches her how to prepare her children for the future: prayer, fasting, and alms-giving.