The Most Holy Trinity
The mission of the Holy Spirit
“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. Jn 16,12-15
In the today passage Jesus is speaking to the disciples, who are sad and puzzled because he had yet informed that he will have to leave them: “But I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you” (Jn 16,7). They do not know who the Paraclete is – a Greek word which means Comforter – but they understood that Jesus is close to go and that he will leave them alone. It is the moment of the departure, which recalls the cut of the umbilical cord which unifies the mother to the son: a necessary event to the purpose that he could start an independent life and he continues to grow. However, as a mother does not abandon the son just born but nurses him and by the same time she provides for him the best food to make him stronger and an autonomous person, so Jesus promises to the disciples the Holy Spirit, the Advocate. His raising to the sky is the vital moment for the born of the Church and a sign of love for his disciples, because the Holy Spirit, in addition to give comfort for the fact that they remained alone, will transmit to them the same spirit which the Father has transmitted to him. It will be the moment of the full maturing, as men and as disciples, which will make them capable of understanding the truth which by that moment they refuse: “I have still to tell you a lot of things, but for the moment you are not capable to bear their weight”. When the Advocate will arrive, he – Jesus promises – “will guide you to the whole truth”. This expression “the whole truth” means that the disciples will be lightened on the mysteries which regard God, the mission of Jesus on the earth, the truths of the Gospel and those ones on the destiny of the man, the mystery of the creation of the world, the sense of the human history, the plan of the universal Salvation and the reality of the Kingdom of the heaven. It is a complete and global truth which, by the status on which the disciples are as far as the communications are concerned at the time of Jesus with reference to the today passage, it is not possible for them to fully understand and neither to bear the relevant weight. Moreover they are not capable to capture the sense of the human undressing of Jesus during the passion and his death on the cross, which is quite close in time. Neither they are capable to understand that also them, continuing the mission of the Teacher, will have to suffer the experience of the cross. This passage of the gospel, by its sad sweetness, transmits also the feeling of the several parents who, across the elapsing of the time and the maturing of the experience, realize that the sons behave wrongly, but they are capable only of a poor advise to help them. They are only capable to pray the Lord to make them growing and welcoming the Holy Spirit to light their minds and to make them understanding the sense of the life.