Sunday after Ascension Day AD 2024

Before suffering and dying, Jesus made a promise to His disciples: „When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me: and ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.“

In the original Greek text, the word translated into English as „comforter“ is „parakletos“. This word is used in five places in the New Testament, four times for the Holy Spirit and once for Jesus himself. Namely, Saint John writes in his First Epistle: „My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.“

The English translation of the word „parakletos“ here is „advocate“, and this is actually a more correct translation than „comforter“. The word „advocate“ comes from Latin and means exactly the same as the Greek „parakletos“: someone who is called to support someone else, to speak on their behalf and to plead for them.

It is for this that God has poured out His Holy Spirit on us, that He may be with us, that He may support and confirm us, that He may revive and sanctify us, and that He may speak within us and for us. Saint Paul says that the Holy Spirit „beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God“, and it is the Spirit of God who makes us the „stewards of the manifold grace of God“, as Saint Peter writes in today’s Epistle.

Jesus wants us to testify about Him in the power of His Spirit, both with our words and with our lives, even when we know we must suffer for His name. We can do this if we have that divine Comforter with us to encourage, confirm and guide us. And if we don’t forget that we have „an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous who is the propitiation for our sins“.