The person of the Holy Spirit is so simple that He cannot be expressed or explained so as to be understood. The Spirit makes Himself known to those who receive Him with a willing heart. The Spirit is strong love that penetrates the dark place of our heart that still fears death will have the last word. The Spirit comes to us to lift us above and through the struggles and despair we perceive around us, spreading hope like fire. The Spirit makes it easy and joyful to stand for what is right and speak the words of fire that burn from the heart of God. The Spirit accomplishes our union with the Father and the Son while at the same time completing the mission He has in the world through us. May we all burn with divine fire and experience the love of God beyond limit.
Saturday of the Seventh Week of Easter
This part of the Gospel according to John provides an interesting insight into the continuity of the Christian life from the Passion through Pentecost and beyond. John is to remain just as Jesus Himself remains, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the consummation of the world.” The Love and connection that united John with Jesus at the Last Supper as he rested upon the Sacred Heart comes to define not only who John is for Jesus, but also who John is as a Christian and who John is for us. Peter’s question and Jesus’ response invite us to discover who John is in a deeper way.
Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter
do you love me?… I love you. An extraordinary variation in the Greek vocabulary appears in the three repetitive verses, 15, 16, and 17. Respectively, there are two different verbs for “to love,” for “to know,” and for “to feed or tend,” and two or three different nouns for sheep. With the partial exception of Origen, the great Greek commentators of old, like Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria, and the scholars of the Reformation period, like Erasmus and Grotius, saw no real difference of meaning in this variation of vocabulary; but British scholars of the last century, like Trench, Westcott, and Plummer, found therein subtle shades of meaning. We shall discuss their thesis, but we note that most modern scholars have reverted to the older idea that the variations are a meaningless stylistic peculiarity (see Moule, IBNTG, p. 198; E. D. Freed, “Variations in the Language and Thought of John,” ZNW 55 [1964], especially 192–93). Why the variation is not consistently introduced elsewhere remains a puzzle; for instance, in ch. 10 John uses the same word for sheep fifteen times, and in 13:34 and 14:21 John uses the same verb “to love” (agapan) three and four times respectively.
For the verb “to love” in the questions and answers of 21:15–17, the variations are these: