"If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you.

"I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me; because I live, you will live also. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.

"He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him."

Homily:

"If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you."

The Easter season will soon come to an end. In a few days, we will celebrate the Ascension of the Lord into Heaven. And soon, the feast of Pentecost will remind us of the prodigious event that is the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and in them! For Jesus will leave us and go to Heaven, and the Spirit of God will come and dwell in us: a mysterious exchange will take place... Why?

When Jesus was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary, this took place through the operation of the Holy Spirit. And this was no accident... Indeed, if the Word of God was incarnated in the Man Jesus, it is because the Most Blessed Virgin Mary placed her faith in God, through the intermediary of the Archangel Gabriel, who spoke in God's name. But at the same time as the Incarnation of the Word was taking place, the Spirit of God came and dwelt in Mary, who then became the mystical Spouse of the Holy Spirit.

Now, this union of the Holy Spirit and Mary never stopped growing until the day of the birth of the Child Jesus. At that moment, this union became perfect: when Jesus left the womb of his Mother, the Holy Spirit took full possession of his virginal Spouse! This is why Jesus rose up into Heaven and left us: it had to be so in order for the Holy Spirit to be able to fully take possession of the soul of all those who have placed their faith in Christ!

The Holy Spirit who is to come is therefore that "other Counselor" of whom Jesus speaks: the Holy Spirit, the other Paraclete, comes to take the place of Jesus, the first Paraclete. Jesus is the foundation, the foundation stone of the building, the cornerstone that the builders had rejected; and the Holy Spirit is he who builds the dwelling of God upon this unshakeable foundation, a foundation that is so united to the entire building that this same building becomes, in a way, the foundation, the only stone, of the whole!

All of this is realized through the great sacrament we call "baptism", but also, above all, through that other sacrament we call "confirmation"! What baptism begins, confirmation completes and perfects. If the first Paraclete, Jesus, came into us through baptism, it is the "other Paraclete", the Holy Spirit, who comes and transforms us into the Temple of God through confirmation! Baptism only initiates us into the life of God, and it calls to that other sacrament, which is indispensable to our salvation, at least under the form of desire: confirmation in the Holy Spirit!

"I will not leave you desolate; I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me; because I live, you will live also. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you."

Jesus is already in Heaven: we no longer see him... So how can he say: "You will see me; because I live, you will live also"? Quite simply, because we live through faith! Now, faith gives us a certain vision of the things of God... So, by believing in Jesus, we see him with the eyes of faith, even if the eyes of the body do not see him...

Jesus says: "You will see me; because I live, you will live also." This life we live is a life of faith, but a life of faith full of love and charity! A love that makes us see Jesus in that other person, there, who walks by us on the street, or who bursts into our life, bringing us the joy of Christ, or perhaps sometimes causing us some trouble...

This life of faith in love is one we do not live alone: the Holy Spirit is there to help us and fortify us, for he is the "Power of the Most High" (Lk. 1:35). Just as the Holy Spirit is united to Mary as to his Spouse, in the same way, the Spirit of God comes into us to transform us into him, through faith and charity, in the hope of the Return of Christ, the foundation of all this spiritual union!

The more the Lord Jesus comes into us, the more the action of the Holy Spirit is strengthened and spread out in us. Let us ask the Most Blessed Virgin Mary to prepare our heart to worthily receive the Body of her Son in the sacrament of the Eucharist! Becoming, even more so, sons in the Son, by the coming of the Holy Spirit, it will then be the moment for us to cry out: "Abba! Father!" (Rm. 8:15)

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