I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.
It is reassuring to know that Jesus understood that his disciples were not angels who understood entirely with one movement of intellect, but rather creatures made of both matter and spirit whose understanding came in successive stages. Even though Jesus himself was the greatest of teachers it did not negate the humanity of the students who would need to come to terms first with this then with that aspect of revelation. This was partially a matter of the working of the human mind. But it was also constrained by the working of the human heart. For how could the disciples bear the truth that was contingent on their understanding of the cross in the divine plan when they were still afraid to even ask about the cross, as we saw in yesterday's Gospel reading (see John 16:5)? To be ready for more required a certain maturity of lived experience. It required the interaction of divine grace and human failure in the course of history. And finally, it required the insight of the Spirit of truth himself to bring them, one step at a time, into all truth.
But when he comes, the Spirit of truth,
he will guide you to all truth.
The Spirit does guide us as individuals. But it is as a body led by the successors of the disciples that we attain to the fullness of truth. This is clear from the fact that even the most amiable and well educated individual Christians are prone to deep disagreement on key points of doctrine. But this role of the Holy Spirit in the Church does not mean that he is not also meant to have a role in the lives of individual believers. It is true that we, like the disciples, are limited in what we can believe at first. This is true because we need to have a firm grasp on basic principles before we can understand their corollaries. But wholistic understanding, what we might call the understanding of the heart, is something in which we must grow by the guidance of the Holy Spirit as well. Like the disciples we tend to shy away from gazing directly upon the cross. It is at first in hindsight that the providence of God makes sense and is revealed. Things go wrong, we ourselves flail and fail, but God still brings good from what appeared to be only evil. Crosses eventually reveal their relation to the resurrection. Once the Holy Spirit makes this connection real in our minds and hearts he is more free to proceed to help us understand "the things that are coming", the heavenly realities which are our hope at the end of time, but in which, as the Spirit assures us, we already begin to share here and now.
Everything that the Father has is mine;
for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine
and declare it to you.
The Father loves the Son with all that he has and all that he is. This love of the Father for the Son is the very gift that Jesus shares with us by the Holy Spirit. It is no mere academic declaration that he gives us. It is rather the love of God poured out.
And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” (see Galatians 4:6)
The teaching of Jesus, that even his disciples could not accept everything all at once, gives us hope for others who do not immediately accept (but hopefully also do not entirely reject) the Gospel message. We saw such people in Paul's encounter at the Areopagus in Athens. We may hope that a response like, "We should like to hear you on this some other time" is sincere and that the Holy Spirit will guide people at all different stages of the journey until all come to believe.
No comments:
Post a Comment