[stephenkhoo]

Scripture Reflections
15 May, 2012, Sixth Tuesday of Easter
THE HOLY SPIRIT AS THE ADVOCATE IN OUR WITNESSING AND MISSION
SCRIPTURE READINGS: ACTS 16:22-34; JN 16:5-11

Earlier on in the farewell discourse to His disciples, Jesus warned them of the imminent persecution that would take place on account of Him. Indeed, the gospel earlier alluded to the excommunication of the Christian Jews from the synagogue in 85 A.D., when at the Synod of Jamnia, it was decreed that Jews who became Christians were excommunicated not only from the synagogue but from the community as well. Many of them were separated from their communities, dismissed from their jobs and suffered different degrees of physical persecution. Conversion is paid with a heavy price. Hence, under such circumstances, it warranted Jesus to reassure His disciples that they would not be alone, more so especially when He had told them that He was returning to His Father.

Yet, the gospel text tells us that they were sad. Their sadness was due to the fact that they did not fully understand where Jesus was going and so thought that Jesus was abandoning them. As Jesus said in regret, “Not one of you has asked, ‘Where are you going?’” Sure, they knew that Jesus was returning to the Father, to the one who sent Him. But in returning to the Father Jesus was in fact going nowhere. He was only going back to where He truly belongs. He is the Son of the Father. Hence, His return was His glorification. So when Jesus spoke of His return to the Father, He was actually speaking of His presence in a new way. The Father is not somewhere in heaven, dwelling above the earth. Nay, the Father is fully present everywhere.

Hence, Jesus was returning to the Father to resume His divinity. Only with His glorification could Jesus, who is no longer limited by space and time, come in a new way in the Holy Spirit to live not just with His disciples but in His disciples. So the going away of Jesus, which was His physical departure, was for the purpose of coming in a spiritual way in the hearts of His disciples. This explains why Jesus said, “It is for your own good that I am going because unless I go, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I do go, I will send Him to you.

With the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the disciples would be given all that was necessary to face the persecutions ahead of them. How? The Holy Spirit would come as an advocate. Perhaps a more comprehensive translation of the word Advocate is a lawyer. For the Holy Spirit, who comes as our advocate, is not only our defense lawyer but He is also the prosecutor as well. The irony is that the Advocate defends the disciples of Jesus by prosecuting the world and bringing the world to judgment. Indeed, this certainly brings out the idea of the Paraclete because the Holy Spirit is parallel to Jesus. In the trial before Pilate, Jesus was the real judge condemning Pilate and the Jews who rejected Him. Like Jesus, the Holy Spirit would defend the disciples by making them witnesses and judges before the world.

He does this firstly by showing “the world how wrong it was about sin.” What is the greatest sin of humankind? According to Jesus, it is the refusal to believe in Him. To reject Jesus is to reject that He is the Love of God in person. Sin is precisely anti-life and anti-love. So when we reject Jesus as God’s personal love to us, we also reject the invitation to love the way God loves in us. As a result, we live in false sufficiency. We think we are loving or are capable of true love when we love only ourselves. Only the Holy Spirit can reveal our helplessness and powerlessness in love. We deceive ourselves if we think we can love without Jesus. In contrast we have the jailer and his family. When they saw the power of the Lord, they believed in Him and were saved.

Secondly, we need the Holy Spirit to manifest to us that Jesus is truly the revelation of God; that all that Jesus has claimed implicitly is true. The Holy Spirit vindicates Jesus’ life, passion, death and resurrection. Only in the Holy Spirit, do we come to realize that Jesus is truly the Son of the Father because the Father has identified Himself with Him by raising Him from the dead through the Holy Spirit. Hence, in the Holy Spirit, Jesus is revealed as the love of the Father. As Jesus said, the Holy Spirit will show “who was in the right: proved by my going to the Father and your seeing me no more.” The Holy Spirit is sent to us to lead us to a personal knowledge of Jesus. No can call Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit.

Thirdly, we need the Holy Spirit to help us search our conscience and judge what is right and true. The Holy Spirit teaches us “about judgement: proved by the prince of this world being already condemned.’ Only the Holy Spirit can enlighten our hearts and make us aware that if we fail to respond to Jesus, we are already judging ourselves. For if Jesus is the true man and the true God, then failing to live His life would be to deny our true calling in life. Hence, we condemn ourselves when confronted by the light of Christ. God will not judge us but we will judge ourselves before Jesus Himself.

The promises of Jesus indeed were fulfilled in the apostolic Church. For we read in the acts of the apostles that whenever the apostles were arrested for preaching about Jesus, they would come before the secular and religious authorities as judges and not so much as defenders. Furthermore, as in today’s first reading, we see how the apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit and assured of Jesus’ presence, were completely joyful even in suffering for their faith because they know the Lord is risen. They were praying and worshipping fervently and never discouraged even though they were whipped and humiliated. Only those who have encountered the Holy Spirit can live out the life that Jesus lived and be true to their calling.

Today, we are called to be witnesses of Jesus in our lives. We can do this only if we ourselves are convicted of our sin, that is, our failure to rely on His grace and love; be convinced that Jesus is the Revelation of God in person by His words and deeds; and be brought to judgment before Him when we recognize how inadequate we are in configuring ourselves after the heart of Jesus. It is important to remember that we are called not just to defend our faith before non-believers in the world but more importantly, we are called to prosecute the world by speaking out against injustices and false values that degrade humanity and society. To exercise the prophetic role necessarily requires us to seek the assistance of the Paraclete, our defense lawyer and public prosecutor, so that in the power of the Holy Spirit we can be His witnesses, since He fights Jesus’ cause for us through us. Otherwise, we can be misled or lack courage in the face of challenges, persecutions and hostilities. With the Holy Spirit, we will be able to remain firm in our faith and in our loyalty to Christ and His gospel.