Let all the earth cry out to God with joy. (Psalm 65)
Jesus promises his disciples the Advocate, “to be with you forever, that Spirit of truth whom the world can never receive since it neither sees nor knows him; but you know him, because he is with you, he is in you.”
We can sit and stare hopelessly at these life-giving promises of Jesus and feel bereft, somehow overlooked in the distribution of this wonderful Gift. Then, with a little more reflection, we see that loving Jesus is a precondition to receiving his gifts; love which we demonstrate by our sincere efforts to keep his commandments.
This is an awakening – this realization that love is not a feeling but a conscious decision we make to keep God’s commandments, and that to love is to do loving things. To make the decision to love, inspired by the Gospel, is to have received the Holy Spirit, the promised and longed-for Advocate.
