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The gospel passage I just proclaimed is a continuation of last Sunday’s gospel. It’s the farewell discourse. After Jesus breaks bread with his disciples and washes their feet, he spends the next five chapters saying good-bye to them. One remarkable thing is that although Jesus is within a day of his own cruel and unjustified death, his focus is not on himself. Jesus does not waste one minute looking for pity, or a shoulder to cry on, or on how the disciples might avenge this terrible injustice that is about to happen to him.

He’s not concerned about himself at all; he knows he’s in the hands of God, his Abba. What he’s focused on are those he’s leaving behind. Jesus is concerned about the wellbeing of the disciples and how they will manage in his physical absence. He doesn’t want them to cope, to just get by. He wants them to thrive. He’s already told them that he came that they may have life and have it to the full!

Maybe you’ve had the privilege of sitting by a loved one who was close to death. And maybe you’ve had the greater privilege of that person speaking about you and how important you were in their life. Before they die, they are already giving you their spirit.  

Apparently, when my mother was in the hospital dying, she shared a room with another woman who was seriously ill herself but recovering. One day, this lady’s husband entered the hospital room, noticed how sad his wife looked and also noticed the bed next to hers was empty. My mother died and both the lady and her husband were shocked. Neither one of them, by their own admission, had any clue how close my mother was to death. This man later on tracked down and told my father how much of a support his wife (my mother) had been to his ill wife. He said that his wife found in my mother a soul mate, seemingly handpicked, and given to her when she needed it most. While the clock was ticking on my own mother’s life, she spent what little strength she had left speaking words of hope to her roommate. She saved none of her precious energy for herself. We would not have known this without this man’s testimony. He told my father that he will forever remember what a dying woman selflessly did to bolster his wife’s spirit. He even went so far as to credit my mother with his wife’s recovery. As life was pouring out of my mother, it was pouring into her roommate.

Maybe that’s what Jesus is doing in today’s gospel. He’s not only promising his Spirit to his disciples as some future gift; he’s already opening their hearts to receive it before he dies.

The opening line of today’s gospel passage is very telling, yet it’s kind of ambiguous. It needs to be read and interpreted the correct way. The line goes like this. Jesus said to his disciples, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Jesus is not wagging his finger at the disciples and insisting that their words of love must be backed up by action. “If you really love me, then you will do as I do…or maybe I won’t love you back.” Rather, it’s a statement of the implication of spiritual union. It’s better read this way: “If you love me, I will give you the ability to keep my commandments.” If the disciples love Jesus, if they stay in communion with him, then this communion will provide the inspiration and energy to live as Jesus lives. It’s not a threat that if we don’t keep his commandment to love, somehow Jesus will withdraw his love from us. Instead, it’s an invitation to remain connected to Jesus. And if we do so, we will become conduits, channels of Jesus’ love that’s already flowing in us.

But how can the disciples stay in touch with Jesus when he’s already told them that he is returning to the Father? “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.” Another Advocate? Yes, another Advocate. Jesus is the first Advocate, and the second Advocate will continue his work. Jesus was the revelation of the truth, and this second Advocate will be the Spirit of truth. He says that we already know this Spirit because it lives in us; it abides in us.

It’s not a question of racking our brains about how to find this elusive Spirit and then figure out how to connect with it. It’s a question of learning to let this Spirit abide within us. Using a different metaphor, Jesus has already told us that he is the vine, and we are the branches. If we remain connected to him, we will bear much fruit. That’s a given. By being open to his Spirit, and allowing that Spirit to flow through us, there’s no way we cannot bear good fruit.

Jesus goes on to say, “I will not leave you orphans; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me…I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” Through the Spirit the disciples will always be connected to Jesus and through Jesus to the Father. Although Jesus is leaving them, he’s not going to leave them orphans. Better said, he is going to leave them in one way and remain with them in another way. His departure through death is not loss. It’s a different form of presence. Don’t think of it this way: Jesus is going to God when he dies and when they die, they will go to God and be reunited with him. It’s more helpful to think of it this way: once Jesus has died and is no longer physically among them, he will not be gone. He will be present to them in and through the Spirit in the depth of their own being. The disciples are not being encouraged to hope for life after death. They are being instructed in a conscious change, to become aware of spiritual presence without the physical manifestation.

I love the way the great spiritual master Henri Nouwen put it. He said that while Jesus was the Way (and the Truth and the Life), in some sense Jesus was also in the way. While he was physically walking this earth, he—like all of us—was limited. But in his spirit, the spirit that has no regard for boarders and boundaries, the spirit that blows where it will, Jesus was able to be more intimate with us than he could be in his flesh.

This Spirit has no problem with sealed tombs nor with locked doors. If that’s the case, the space between two hospital beds is no big deal either.

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love.

~Fr. Phil