But when he comes, the Spirit of truth,
he will guide you to all truth.
The Spirit guides us from partial understanding into the fullness of Catholic truth. He leads us from altars inscribed, "To an Unknown God" to the altar of the sacrifice of the Cross.
Without the Spirit we grope for him. Even though he is not far from any of us we still manage to mix things up without guidance. Even though we recognize a certain likeness between us, made in God's image, and God himself, the origin of that image, our ways of approaching God tend to devolve to idol worship. We represent him as something even less than human. And maybe this is because that without the Spirit he is not easily approachable or understandable in the way the Spirit makes possible. But when we fail to recognize the Lord of heaven and earth we tend to give our loyalty and even our worship to created realities that are not deserving thereof.
Since therefore we are the offspring of God,
we ought not to think that the divinity is like an image
fashioned from gold, silver, or stone by human art and imagination.
God waits in mercy and in patience during times of ignorance. He overlooks them, not so that everyone can go their own way and do their own thing, but so that everyone can repent.
The Father raised Jesus from the dead and made him the judge of the world. He gives the world his Spirit so that we can have all truth and with that truth be ready. In the judgment God will fine set the inequities and injustices allowed into the world by sin to right. If we want to be on the right side of that judgment we can only do it by listening to the Spirit of truth.
It is nice to know that God is patient. It is reassuring that his Spirit doesn't overload us with what we cannot bear at the moment. But that said, he is making us ready. He is leading us on. He is preparing for the day when he will come to judge the earth. Amen, LORD Jesus. Even so, come.
He has lifted up the horn of his people;
Be this his praise from all his faithful ones,
from the children of Israel, the people close to him.
Alleluia.
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