Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 25, 2025

2025 May 25 SUN: SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
Acts 15: 1-2. 22-29/ Ps 67: 2-3. 5. 6. 8 (4)/ Rv 21: 10-14. 22-23/ Jn 14: 23-29 (In the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, the Ascension of the Lord supersedes the Seventh Sunday of Easter. Therefore, the following second reading and gospel may be substituted today: Rv 22:12-14. 16-17. 20/ Jn 17: 20-26)

Given that today is the fifth anniversary of the murder of a man named George Floyd in Minneapolis, we do need to keep in mind all of the ways in which humanity must keep growing. And that includes growing out of cruelty, growing out of race-based conclusions about people. We come together and we hear of the love of the Son of God, and we know we still need to be transformed into His loving likeness.

What I intend to do for the next few weekends is consider the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit may well be the person of the Blessed Trinity which we have the hardest time knowing.

The Scriptures today will help us, but as I say, we will take several weekends through Trinity Sunday on the 15th of June to really focus on the Holy Spirit within God who is Trinity. And of course we all know that the Trinity itself is the mystery in the most strict sense, because it had to be revealed to us. It was not something that our intellects would reach. It had to be revealed to us, and we need to consider how it has been revealed. 

In this Gospel passage, Jesus is speaking as He does so many times of His relationship to the Father. We can consider the relationships we know of Father and Son, of mother and daughter, and we can name many, many more. And as much as we know the love which is shared in these relationships, we must understand that in the Blessed Trinity between the Father and the Son, it is all the more intense. And we have to keep that in mind as we consider the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. So Jesus is introducing to the disciples the Holy Spirit whom He describes as the Advocate, the one who speaks on our behalf. And this is one of many images of the Holy Spirit. I believe that we can look at the other two Scriptures today to gain an appreciation of the Holy Spirit.

First of all, we have from the Acts of the Apostles the first great controversy which the early Church had to work through. That is the question of whether non-Jewish people who come to believe in Jesus are bound to various Jewish laws. The answer came back, no. It had to be worked out at a council in Jerusalem, and we have heard some of that account today. You can read it in full starting in the 15th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. And happily, those who met realized that this was not a time to cling to opinions and to dominate by saying that the opinions that one holds must be right and you must be wrong. It was a process of thinking and praying together, and they came forth with that result. And I like to think that the Holy Spirit is the thing that makes the difference when we think of relationships between two people. The difference between the awkwardness or hostility that we may see there. And the love that can and must develop. We see the Holy Spirit there.

And then in our passage from Revelation today, once again a beautiful image of the new Jerusalem descending from heaven. It says that there was no Temple in the city because God was everywhere within it, and there was light everywhere. And those images can likewise help us with appreciating the Holy Spirit. So we can think on these things and we will continue to stretch our imaginations and come to this deeper appreciation of the Holy Spirit, which is in fact the love shared between the Father and the Son. We know we need love to heal us. We welcome a love that has loved us from the beginning, which we then can apply for healing the world.