Parakletos: The Sunday After the Ascension (June 1, 2025)

When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of me, and ye also shall bear witness.”

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

What an exciting and fast-paced part of the Church Kalendar we find ourselves in this morning. This past Thursday was the Feast of the Ascension which marks the ending of our Lord’s earthly ministry. You may notice that today, there is no Paschal Candle. That’s because the candle is extinguished at the end of the Gospel reading on Ascension Day to signify the end of Eastertide. Ascensiontide is much briefer than Eastertide: Easter is 40 days, but there is only about 9 days between Ascension and the next big part of the Church Kalendar: the Feast of Pentecost in which we celebrate the coming of the Holy Ghost. But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves today. We rewind a little bit in the Gospels, before the events of Ascension, and we get a window into Jesus preparing his disciples for the fact that he is going back to his Father who sent him where he will sit on the right hand of God. Is this the end? Not quite. Luke’s Gospel ends, but then the book of Acts begins. Christ won a monumental victory by his Cross and Resurrection, but there is much left to be done. The world is not rectified yet; good prayers still go unanswered; everything still seems broken. But the answer to these problems lies in the Great Commission: the earthly ministry of Christ established a beachhead in establishing the Church which is a kind of base of operations or embassy from which the Catholic and Apostolic Church can spread throughout the whole world. Guess what? You are part of that mission. And the beautiful thing is that Christ hasn’t left us to do this mission alone; we have a Helper, a Comforter, an Advocate to help us.

When Christ ascends into heaven, it means his earthly ministry has concluded and he is with the Father. Jesus’ ministry can be characterized as a threefold condescension: first, he lowers himself into the form of a servant by taking on a human nature in the Incarnation; second, he descends even further to the Cross; and from there, he goes to the dead. And yet, on the Ascension, we see the ultimate vindication of the Son by his Father as he is lifted up into heaven where he draws all men to himself. The Ascension means that the gap between humanity and God has been closed; Christ still has his human nature joined to his person and now that glorified humanity sits on the right hand of God. It’s that very glorified humanity that you and I became partakers of at the very moment of our baptisms. While he is bodily absent from us, he is in heaven where he offers himself to the Father on our behalf perpetually as his intercession for us. For all these reasons, we might consider that the Feast of the Ascension is perhaps one of the most underrated feasts in the Church Year because it’s freighted with theological import.

Jesus tells us that when he leaves he goes to be with the Father but he promises that he will send another. Spoiler alert: it’s the Holy Spirit. The King James Version calls this other the Comforter which refers to one who gives strength or who lessens grief or trouble. The Greek word here is Parakletos which can be a legal term for a legal assistant or advocate. In the New English Translation, they choose the term “Helper” and the NRSV uses “Advocate.” Personally, I think “advocate” is the best way to understand the Holy Spirit because it’s got a much more active role. A comforter is a good and valuable person to have in your corner, but it’s inherently reactive; an advocate takes on a more active role. I’ve visited enough people in the hospital and been able to see the difference when the sick person has someone who can advocate on their behalf. The advocate badgers the nurses and doctors in a good way to make sure their loved one gets exactly what they need. It’s a beautiful thing. The Holy Spirit then is the advocate for the Church because he perpetually reminds us of Christ and the Gospel, the sole reason for the Church’s existence. He propels us forward in our twofold mission first to know God as revealed in Christ by guiding us into all truth and second, to make him known in the world. The Spirit always points us to the Son and keeps the Word in front of us. And he brings us to the Father in intercession for us. Truly, this is a great gift that we’ll be celebrating more next week.

But before we do, we might stop and ask why do we need the Holy Spirit? The answer is that the same Father who sends the Spirit to us is the same Father who sends us out into the world. If Jesus told us our job is to preach the Gospel, then why do we need the Holy Spirit to offer testimony to Christ and to empower us? I think the answer to that is found in what Fr. David talked to us about last Sunday: we live in a world that’s still being changed, it’s not in its final form of evolution, it’s not what it should be. As a result, the world isn’t going to recognize the monumental shift that took place after the events of Good Friday and Easter. To those of us who believe, the Cross is a message of hope, a revelation of divine love, and the means of salvation. But to those who are perishing, it’s utter and complete foolishness. The Jewish tradition doesn’t see how God could die a cursed death on a tree. The philosophical Greeks were too snobby to find the universal message of salvation of much worth. The Muslim tradition thinks that the Incarnation is idolatrous because there is only one God. Buddhism finds our fixation on the suffering God to be troubling. The Hindus think we’re too narrow in isolating only one God as “the way, the truth, and the life.” Today, many atheists, agnostics, and even cultural Christians think that belief is a facile and silly coping mechanism that’s really not much different than a fairy tale. The Church, on the other hand, recognizes that something amazing has happened: death has been trampled by death. We have escaped Plato’s cave of shadows and now we can proclaim freedom to the captives: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matt 28:19-20a). Unfortunately, the world isn’t going to get it and when the world doesn’t understand, it lashes out: “The light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not…That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not” (John 1:5, 8, 10). If that’s how they treated Jesus, our Master, while he was here, how can we, his disciples, expect any better? This is what Jesus warns the disciples about, speaking mostly about their reception among the Jews: “They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me” (John 16:2-3). If Jesus didn’t warn them about this, the Apostles may have been offended, the Greek word is skandalizo. We might be scandalized by the fact that the world won’t accept what we have to say, but we shouldn’t be surprised, nothing should shock us. When the world shrouded in darkness has a spotlight shone into its darkness, it lashes out violently, but we should be a people who can’t turn aside from the truth, despite the opposition. It is for this reason that the Holy Spirit is our aid, our Advocate as we leave this forward operating base and go on mission into the world. The historic name for the Holy Communion service is the Mass. That name comes from the Latin word mittere which means to send and refers to the end of the service: “Depart in peace.” We are sent on a mission and while we’re out there, we’re going to see the horrors that happen in the world. In fact, we might even participate in them. But we have the Holy Spirit pushing us towards the goal, working in us, strengthening us, comforting us so that we can do what he calls us to.

The last few weeks of Eastertide and today’s Gospel readings have been a crash course in what it means to live by the Spirit. The Holy Spirit testifies to us about Jesus Christ and, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, we hear him speak through the Scriptures, through the preaching of Christ crucified for the remission of sins, through the Sacraments, through prayer, and through other Christians. When we hear him speak, it should change us into people who repeat after him so that we too testify to Christ. You come here to get fed, to receive assurance of the Gospel; but you, Christian, have souls to save by testifying to Christ anywhere and everywhere he puts you. Remember, the world won’t get it. To many, we’re foolish for “wasting” our time and energy on the spiritual life, but we can’t help it because we’ve encountered him and the Spirit continues to bolster us in that work. Trying it on our own is going to end in futility. The third person of the Trinity is indispensible. Without him, the Christian life is an impossibility; but with him, we can do far more than we ever thought possible.

Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.