HOMILY for 3rd Sun after Octave of Easter (Dominican rite)
James 1:17-21; John 16:5-14
The Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is the Sanctifier. Hence he is, as we say in the Creed, “Dominum et Vivificantem”, the Lord and Giver of Life. For to be holy, to become sanctified, is to participate more fully in the life of the Lord God, and so to share in the eternal life of God the Blessed Trinity himself. This is what we commonly refer to as heaven.
One problem with the word ‘heaven’ is that it seems to us like a location. We refer to the skies above us as the heavens, for example, and so going to heaven can sound like becoming a kind of spiritual astronaut. Such a simplistic idea of heaven would lead the Soviet leader Khrushchev to say: “Gagarin flew into space, but didn't see any god up there”. The Lord recognises this commonplace tendency to localise heaven and to think of it as a place. As he observes in today’s Gospel, his disciples might have asked him where he is going – although none of them do so because their curiosity has been overwhelmed by their sorrow at his imminent departure. So he tells them that he is going not to somewhere but to Someone: “I am going to him who sent me.” (Jn 16:5) So, the Son is returning to the Father, although of course in his divine nature, Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, has never left God the Father, the First Person of the Blessed Trinity, because God is One: the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity is an eternal and undivided unity.
So, in what sense is Jesus Christ going to the one who sent him? How is he going to the Father? It must be in his human nature, the humanity that Jesus assumed at his Incarnation in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, and in which he suffered and wept and died, sharing the burden of our fallen human condition. So, at his Ascension, Christ who is both “true God and true Man”, takes our humanity with its mortality and sickness and pain, and he goes to the Father, he ascends with our human nature into the fullness of Life itself. Jesus tells his disciples that he must go to the Father and it is to their “advantage”. Indeed, it is to the advantage of all humanity, and particularly of all the baptised. And “advantage” is a bit of an understatement. For let us be clear: By going to the Father with our human nature, Christ has in fact divinised our humanity, making it possible henceforth for all who are united to him by grace, to share in the divine life of God!
Hence, in heaven, as the human nature participates in the divine Life itself, all that is lacking in the human condition – all the sorrow and suffering and sin that we endure and that we know too well – shall be redeemed, restored, renewed. In Christ and with Christ and through Christ, our human nature is thus to be filled with the fullness of God. This is what we call holiness; this is what we mean by heaven; this is our goal and calling as Christians. We’re called to be Saints!
Notice, therefore, that heaven isn’t so much a place as a state of existing in the Lord God who is being itself. Heaven is to enjoy the fullness of God who is Life itself, without any lack, any defects, any imperfections, for heaven is to participate in the abundance of the divine life itself, the life of the Risen Lord who is victorious over sin and sickness and sorrow and death. Thus St John, in the book of Apocalypse, refers to “a new heaven and a new earth” in which man shall live with God and he with them, so that “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more.” (cf Apoc 21:1, 3-4) This is the life of the Saints, of those who dwell in God and he in them, and this is the life that the Holy Spirit comes to give us even now through grace. As St John says: “Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them.” (Apoc 21:3) Thus, the Lord Jesus says to his disciples in today’s Gospel that it is to our “advantage” that he goes for having, as it were, established the principle of a divinised humanity in his own Person by going to the Father, so now he sends the Holy Spirit, who is God himself, to dwell within us so as to make us divine – this is the effect of what we call sanctifying grace which is caused in our souls by the Holy Spirit. Hence, the Holy Spirit is the “Lord and Giver of Life”: the Spirit comes to sanctify us, to raise us up from the death-dealing condition of sin, and to make us partakers of divine life so that, as Jesus says, “he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live” (Jn 11:25).
What does it mean to believe in Jesus? It means, ultimately, to know that he alone can save us from our fallen human condition. It means to trust that Christ has won our salvation, so that, even if we suffer sickness and sorrow and death in this life, we believe, we know in faith, that these do not have any lasting power over us. For Christ has risen from the dead! He has conquered the grave! He has freed man from the finality of death! To believe in the risen Lord Jesus is to be rescued from despair and despondency, and to be freed from all the lies of the Devil. For the Enemy tells us that God has abandoned us, and that we must therefore save ourselves, escape our human limitations through acquiring more money, power, material goods, drugs, and bodily pleasures. But Christ sets us free from slavery to sin and the slave masters of a godless world, and God has sent the Holy Spirit to liberate us. Hence Jesus says in today’s Gospel: the Spirit will “convince the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgement” and “he will guide you into all the truth”. (Jn 16:8, 13b)
Pope St John Paul II explains that in this passage from St John’s Gospel, the work of the Holy Spirit is to bring us to believe in Jesus and his identity as Saviour. He says: “Convincing about sin and righteousness has as its purpose the salvation of the world, the salvation of men.” (Dominum et Vivificantem, 27) Therefore, the Holy Spirit sanctifies us and vivifies us by turning us away from unbelief; away from trusting in idols, in those persons and things and actions which cannot save us but lead to futility and death. Rather, we’re led into Truth, that is to say we’re led deeply into becoming like Jesus himself. For the Holy Spirit sanctifies us. So, his grace causes us to love as God loves, and his gifts and virtues strengthen and enable us to act according to the movements of divine love, so that what we do and say and who we become will glorify God. This is what it is to be a Saint, and this is why the Holy Spirit is given to us. He dwells in us to teach us how to become Saints. As Jesus says: “He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” (Jn 16:14) Behold, the Spirit, with his gift of sanctifying grace alive in our souls, makes us become like Jesus, we become like God; the Spirit divinises our humanity; he sanctifies us. Thus, Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit will “guide you into all the truth”, that is to say, he will guide us into the life of God the Blessed Trinity himself for God is All-True. He will guide us to heaven.
Therefore, let us listen to the Holy Spirit, the “Counsellor” whom Christ has sent to us. Let us pray to the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, who is the “most perfect gift of God” from above. (cf James 1:17) Let us welcome Him who is God dwelling with us. So there is, in fact, just one Novena that is truly necessary: the Pentecost Novena inviting the Holy Spirit to come and fill us with the fullness of God. The Liturgy today, therefore, prompts us to prepare ourselves for his great coming.
