In Eastertide the first reading is always from the Acts of the Apostles.
Luke wrote his gospel as ‘Jesus going up to Jerusalem’.
Then he wrote the Acts of the Apostles as the risen Lord Jesus,
in the form of the Spirit-filled early Church,
going out from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, that is Rome.
Today, we have Philip reaching out to Samaritans,
so that they accept the Word of God,
with Peter and John coming later to lay hands on them
and pray that they receive the Holy Spirit.
The Apostles are energised by new life,
life received as the Holy Spirit,
filling them with faith in the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
New life they want to share.
In John’s gospel today we heard meditations on this great gift.
I shall ask the Father,
and he will give you another Advocate
to be with you for ever.
The word ‘Advocate’ has the sense of someone alongside you,
who speaks on your behalf,
and who speaks better than you can yourself.
Jesus himself is our Advocate,
he intercedes for us with the Father, forever,
but his presence on earth in a single human body is for a limited time.
We are, through Jesus’ intercession, through his advocacy,
sent another Advocate:
an Advocate without the physical and temporal limitations
intrinsic to the Incarnation;
an Advocate for each and every one of us, personally;
an Advocate who, as Jesus says, is with you, and is in you:
the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit prompts us to respond
with commitment and love to Jesus, the Word of God:
listening and learning from Him; identifying with His self-giving.
As we respond with commitment and love,
our awareness of Jesus’ love for us heightens,
and we know him better.
The Holy Spirit, working within us,
gives us glimpses into the mystery of God, shown in Jesus,
the mystery that we, through Jesus, are drawn into:
for He says:
I am in my Father
and you in me and I in you
you in me and I in you: the identification could not be closer.
The Holy Spirit, as advocate ‘speaking’ within us,
speaking better than we can ourselves,
transforms us, individually and collectively,
into the presence of Jesus in the world:
the presence Luke tracks in Acts to the ends of the earth.
In a couple of weeks we will celebrate Pentecost,
the great feast of the outpouring of the Spirit on the Apostles,
filling them with life to take the good news of Jesus to others.
That feast is the culmination of our Eastertide reflection
on the Spirit making the risen Lord present here and now.
Let us prepare for the feast with fervent prayer
over the next fortnight,
fervent prayer with Mary,
who prayed with the Apostles in the upper room,
for a fresh outpouring of the Spirit
for a new breath of life,
in the Church, in this parish, in our own heart.