A Reflection upon Acts 19:1–8 and John 14:15–21
“Si quis diligit me, sermonem meum servabit, et Pater meus diliget eum, et ad eum veniemus, et mansionem apud eum faciemus.” “If any one love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our abode with him.” (Jn. 14:23, the verse immediately following our Gospel)
On this most solemn vigil, the Church stands as the Apostles stood — gathered in the Cenacle, perseverantes unanimiter in oratione (Acts 1:14), awaiting the promised descent of the Paraclitus. The liturgy of Sabbato in Vigilia Pentecostes, with its ancient prophecies, its solemn blessing of the font, and its sober yet expectant tone, gathers the Church into that holy expectation which the Apostles themselves knew. The two Scriptures appointed for our meditation — the encounter at Ephesus in Actus Apostolorum and the Lord’s promise of the alius Paraclitus in St. John — together unveil the very mystery into which the vigil draws us: that the Holy Ghost is given not as a vague consolation, but as the indwelling Spirit of Truth, received through faith, sealed in sacramental rite, and known only by those who love.
I. Si forte Spiritum Sanctum accepistis credentes? — The Question at Ephesus
St. Paul, arriving at Ephesus and finding certain disciples, poses the question which still pierces every soul that presumes itself Christian: “Si Spiritum Sanctum accepistis credentes?” — “Have you received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?” (Acts 19:2, Douay-Rheims). Their answer is one of the most arresting in all the Scriptures: “Sed neque si Spiritus Sanctus est, audivimus” — “We have not so much as heard whether there be a Holy Ghost.”
These men had received only the baptism of John, that baptism in poenitentiam which prepared the way but did not give the Spirit. St. John Chrysostom, in his thirty-ninth homily upon the Acts, observes with characteristic acuity that these disciples were not in error concerning the existence of the Holy Ghost as a divine Person — for John the Baptist himself had spoken of Him — but rather they had not heard that the Holy Ghost was given, that He had come visibly upon the faithful with His sanctifying gifts. Chrysostom writes that the Baptist’s disciples knew the Spirit only as One foretold, not as One bestowed; they stood, as it were, upon the threshold of Pentecost without having crossed it.
Then follows the apostolic action: “baptizati sunt in nomine Domini Iesu. Et cum imposuisset illis manus Paulus, venit Spiritus Sanctus super eos.” They are baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and when Paul lays hands upon them, the Holy Ghost descends, and they speak with tongues and prophesy. The Venerable Bede, in his Expositio Actuum Apostolorum, notes that this imposition of hands is the figure of Confirmation — that second sacramental gift by which the baptized are sealed in robur (in strength) of the Holy Ghost, made soldiers of Christ, perfected in the supernatural life begun at the font. The order is precise and instructive: faith, baptism in the name of Jesus, and the laying on of apostolic hands. Here, in nuce, is the sacramental economy of the Church.
How fitting that this passage is read upon the vigil of Pentecost, while the catechumens of old were prepared at the font! For the Church teaches her children that the descent of the Spirit is not a matter of mere sentiment or sudden enthusiasm, but is bound to the visible rites instituted by Christ and handed down through apostolic succession. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his Catecheses Mystagogicae, dwells at length upon this very point: the chrism of confirmation is no common ointment, but, after the invocation, becomes the gift of Christ and the Holy Ghost, working by the presence of His divinity. Quod autem ungimur, sit nobis Spiritus Sanctus.
II. Alium Paraclitum dabit vobis — The Promise in the Cenacle
We turn now to the Gospel of St. John, where our Lord, upon the eve of His Passion, speaks those words which the Church holds in her memory as the very charter of Pentecost: “Si diligitis me, mandata mea servate. Et ego rogabo Patrem, et alium Paraclitum dabit vobis, ut maneat vobiscum in aeternum, Spiritum veritatis” — “If you love me, keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you for ever, the Spirit of truth” (Jn. 14:15–17).
St. Augustine, in his ninety-fourth tractate upon St. John, treats this passage with luminous depth. He observes that the word alium — another Paraclete — is of greatest moment. For Christ Himself is our Advocate, our Paraclitus, as St. John writes in his first Epistle (1 Jn. 2:1). The Holy Ghost is therefore another Paraclete, alius but not aliud — another Person, but not another Nature. Augustine presses the point: the consubstantiality of the Son and the Spirit is here implicitly declared, for the Father gives One who is of like office and like dignity with the Son. Ipsa est enim consolatio sanctorum, illa perennis, quae est in Deo.
Mark well the condition the Lord places before the gift: Si diligitis me, mandata mea servate. The Spirit is given to those who love, and love is shown not by sentiment but by obedience. St. Gregory the Great, in his Homiliae in Evangelia (Hom. XXX), preached upon a kindred passage of this same chapter and reduces the matter to a saying of crystalline severity: probatio dilectionis, exhibitio est operis — “the proof of love is the showing of the work.” He who would receive the Paraclete must first receive the commandments; he who would be filled with the Spirit of truth must first walk in the way of truth. There is no Pentecost for the disobedient.
And to whom is the Spirit given? “Quem mundus non potest accipere, quia non videt eum, nec scit eum” — “Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, nor knoweth him.” St. Cyril of Alexandria, in his commentary upon St. John, explains that the mundus here signifies not the created order — for all creation groans for the manifestation of the sons of God — but rather the worldly mind, the phronēma sarkos, the carnal wisdom which, being turned away from God, has lost the very capacity to perceive divine things. The Spirit is invisible to the worldly not because He hides Himself, but because they have made themselves blind. Vos autem cognoscetis eum, says the Lord to His own: quia apud vos manebit, et in vobis erit. He shall abide with you and be in you — first the companion, then the indweller; first beside the soul, then within it.
III. Non relinquam vos orphanos — The Indwelling
Then comes the most tender of the Lord’s promises: “Non relinquam vos orphanos: veniam ad vos” — “I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you.” St. Augustine, in the seventy-fifth tractate, makes the precious observation that the Lord’s coming in the Spirit is not different in essence from His own coming, for where the Spirit is, there also is the Son and the Father. This is the mystery of the Trinitarian indwelling, which St. Thomas Aquinas treats with surpassing clarity in the Summa Theologiae (I, q. 43, a. 3): the divine Persons dwell in the soul of the just through sanctifying grace, the Holy Ghost being given as Gift, the Son as known, the Father as principle. Tota Trinitas inhabitat mentem per gratiam.
How then is the Spirit known? “In illo die vos cognoscetis quia ego sum in Patre meo, et vos in me, et ego in vobis” — “In that day you shall know, that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” Here is the very economy of mystical theology: the knowledge of the indwelling Trinity is given through love, not speculation; through obedience, not curiosity; through the Spirit, not the flesh. St. Thomas, treating of the Gifts of the Holy Ghost (I-II, q. 68), teaches that the Spirit moves the soul by His seven gifts as by sails which catch the divine breath, raising the soul above the limits of mere acquired virtue into the realm of connatural knowledge of God. This is the Pentecost which begins in the soul at baptism and is perfected in confirmation, and which the vigil bids us prepare to receive anew.
IV. Application to the Vigil
What, then, is the practical fruit of these readings for the faithful soul upon this holy Saturday? Three things commend themselves.
First, let us examine our own reception of the Spirit. St. Paul’s question echoes still: Si Spiritum Sanctum accepistis credentes? We have indeed received Him — at the font, in the chrism of Confirmation, in every reception of the Most Holy Eucharist worthily made. Yet have we lived as those who have received Him? Or have we, like the disciples at Ephesus, walked as though we had not so much as heard whether there be a Holy Ghost? Let the vigil draw us into a fresh accounting before God.
Second, let us renew our love by obedience. The Lord’s word is unwavering: Si diligitis me, mandata mea servate. Let us this night search out the commandment we have neglected, the precept we have softened, the duty we have evaded — and let us return to obedience, that we may be made fit dwellings for the Paraclete.
Third, let us pray with the Church the ancient collect of this vigil, that we who have received baptism may be inflamed by the Holy Ghost:
Praesta, quaesumus, omnipotens Deus: ut claritatis tuae super nos splendor effulgeat; et lux tuae lucis corda eorum, qui per gratiam tuam renati sunt, Sancti Spiritus illustratione confirmet.
Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God: that the splendor of Thy brightness may shine upon us; and that the light of Thy light may confirm, by the illumination of the Holy Ghost, the hearts of those who have been reborn through Thy grace.
V. Conclusion: Veni, Sancte Spiritus
The vigil deepens into night, and the Church holds her breath. Tomorrow the tongues of fire shall descend upon her, and she shall go forth, as the Apostles went, to teach all nations. But the Spirit who came in tongues upon the Cenacle is the same Spirit who descended at Ephesus when Paul laid on his hands, the same Spirit promised in the upper room, the same Spirit who dwells now in every soul in the state of grace.
Let us therefore prepare to keep the Feast with the Apostles, perseverantes unanimiter in oratione. Let us beg with the sequence which the Church shall sing upon the morrow: Veni, Sancte Spiritus, et emitte caelitus lucis tuae radium — Come, Holy Spirit, send forth from heaven the ray of Thy light. Let us love that we may obey, and obey that we may receive, and receive that we may abide, world without end, in the indwelling fire of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Amen.