The Sixth Sunday of Easter [A]
Acts 8:5-8,14-17 + 1 Peter 3:15-18 + John 14:15-21
St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, Garden Plain, KS
May 10, 2026
“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate.”
Today’s Gospel passage is set at the Last Supper. Although the disciples of Jesus do not fully know at this point what’s ahead, Jesus knows completely. Jesus was fully God all the days that He lived on this earth. He had divine knowledge, which includes divine fore-knowledge. So what He said at the Last Supper was part of a plan.
“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate.” In speaking these words, Jesus is looking beyond His death, beyond His resurrection, and beyond His ascension to Heaven. Jesus is looking to the day of Pentecost, which will occur ten days after His ascension. The Holy Spirit who will come at Pentecost wants to strengthen us in a specific way, for a specific reason.
However, by contrast, it’s also important to remember what Jesus said about the Holy Spirit on another occasion. On the evening of Jesus’ resurrection, He spoke about the Holy Spirit coming for another reason, and in another way. Jesus said to the Apostles, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”[1] In those words, Jesus pointed out one of the specific roles—one of the “jobs”, if you will—that the Holy Spirit carries out. The Holy Spirit works in the Sacrament of Confession to forgive, heal, and strengthen. But that’s not the Holy Spirit’s only role in our lives.
To use an analogy from ordinary life: when you go to your physician to be healed of sickness or disease, your aim is full health, so you can live your life again. Something similar is at work in the spiritual life. When we go to Confession to be healed of spiritual sickness, our aim is full health, so we can live a healthy spiritual life again.
But that begs the question. What role does the Holy Spirit play in an active, healthy spiritual life? That’s what Jesus is speaking about when He says, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate.” The Holy Spirit will appear front and center in two weeks on Pentecost Sunday. But even today, two Sundays beforehand, Jesus is preparing us for Pentecost. He wants us to understand how the Gift of the Holy Spirit animates the active, daily, healthy Christian life.
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Consider what the Creed tells us about the Holy Spirit. We will profess the Creed in just a few minutes. The Creed is usually printed in our missals and missalettes in 32 lines. Yet only four of these lines concern the Holy Spirit directly.
During the Creed, you as a Christian disciple profess: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.” In that sentence there are two titles by which we honor the Holy Spirit. First we profess that the Holy Spirit is our “Lord”. Then we profess that the Holy Spirit is “the giver of life”. Both of these titles for the Holy Spirit run against the grain of the modern world.
In our day and age, when individualism is prized so highly, we minimize the notion of God as our Lord. Certainly, we might consider God the Father as a “lordly” figure. We are less likely to consider God the Son as our Lord. This is because we want Jesus to have a softer image, and we want to consider Him our friend (which is right to do).
Yet least of all do Christians consider God the Holy Spirit to be their Lord. We often reduce the Holy Spirit to a gentle breeze who encourages us to follow our hunches. However, it is essential to recognize the Holy Spirit as our Lord.
We are meant to be subject to the Holy Spirit. He means to rule our lives, to give them order and purpose. He means to do this for the same reason that Jesus came into this world. Jesus proclaimed: “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”[2]
This life is what we’re speaking about when we profess the Holy Spirit to be “the giver of life”. This abundant life is what gives our earthly days authentic meaning. When we choose to recognize the Holy Spirit as our Lord, there is peace. But in all honesty you have to ask: do you want this peace? Or do you want instead what the world offers?
As Christians, we need to allow the Holy Spirit to be our Lord. We need to allow the Holy Spirit to rule our lives and give them order, even when this demands that we admit our sins.
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So given this, how can we invite the Holy Spirit into our lives? How can we allow the Holy Spirit lordship over our earthly lives? One simple way is frequent, worthy reception of the sacraments.
Another way to foster devotion, dedication, and service to the Holy Spirit is to make a Novena to Him. We can make this novena any time during the year, of course. But it’s very powerful to make this novena on the nine days before Pentecost. This year the ninth day before Pentecost will be this coming Friday, May 15.
One thing to keep in mind about a novena is that it’s usually prayed for a specific intention. For example, since this weekend is Mother’s Day, you might want, as a gift to your mother, to offer the novena for her and her intentions. Or since the novena starts on May 15, and May 15 is the feast of St. Isidore the Farmer, you might want to pray the novena for good weather for our crops. Or you might want to pray the novena for someone suffering from serious illness and disease. Or you might want to pray the novena for Deacon Peter Bergkamp and his fellow deacons in our diocese.
God the Holy Spirit is the Love that God the Father and God the Son bear for each other. God the Holy Spirit is the Gift that God the Father and God the Son gift to fallen man. The Gift of the Holy Spirit allows a sinner like yourself or myself to become an adopted child of God the Father. That divine love of the Father and the Son for each other allows us to love as God loves, if we allow the Holy Spirit to be our Lord, and to rule our lives.
[1] John 20:23.
[2] John 10:10.
CLICK HERE FOR THE NOVENA TO THE HOLY SPIRIT
Reflections on the Sacred Liturgy 