Listen

“I have spoken these things to you while I am with you. The Companion, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I told you.

“Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I give to you not as the world gives. Don’t be troubled or afraid. You have heard me tell you, ‘I’m going away and returning to you.’ If you loved me, you would be happy that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than me. I have told you before it happens so that when it happens you will believe."

Think

We are losing the meaning of the word “advocate.” We advocate for change, but that really means to argue for. Better the noun: “One who advocates.” In this meaning, the advocate speaks up for and defends another, often on behalf of one who cannot speak for herself. An advocate pleads the case of another. There is an implied passion, a care for the one being defended.

In today’s passage, Jesus calls the Holy Spirit our Companion – or as it says in many other translations – our Advocate. As Jesus has returned to God, we can take comfort that we have an Advocate, one pleading on our behalf to God. And this same one is teaching and reminding us in ways that are both profound and imperceptible. Yesterday we spoke of God making a home in our lives. Today, we remember that the Advocate – our Companion, the Holy Spirit – is working in and through us, even helping us breathe. As God breathed the first breath in to Adam, so the Holy Spirit breathes with us now… and now… and now.

Pray

Breathe on me, breath of God,
Blend all my soul with Thine,
Until this earthly part of me
Glows with Thy fire divine.
Amen.

Go

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art -
Thou my best thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.