DAILY DEVOTIONAL

Tuesday, October 2, 2018

[Then Jesus said to His disciples,]“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when the Spirit of truth, comes, the Spirit will guide you into all the truth. The Spirit will not speak on His own; He will speak only what He hears, and He will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that He will receive what He will make known to you.  All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what He will make known to you.” – John 16:12-15

NOTE:  Gendered pronouns always frustrate me.  There ought to exist a greater array of pronouns such as a pronoun that conveys personhood without the gender.  Though John and the Church refer to the Spirit in the masculine, in so many ways my experience of the Spirit seems more akin to what I have experienced from the feminine side of personhood.  But language has its limitations and we must be communicating as best we can.

It is as clear as it can be stated … “Christ through the agency of the Holy Spirit still has more to say, more Truth to reveal, a further understanding to convey.  Yet … there is an expression of the Christian faith that confines Christ to the understanding of the first and second century and then at a certain hazy moment, Christ became silent.  I once clung to that premise for Christian understanding.  Builders of theology begin with that initial defined term … they call it “Biblical” but I find it is a false premise for it goes against the Biblical history itself.  From the dawn of humanity’s first encounter with God … God has a history of slowly yet steadily unveiling the Truth.  “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when the Spirit of truth, comes, the Spirit will guide you into all the truth …”

I pray I sense Christ is listening; when I listen in prayer, I sense Christ is speaking.  At least in my life, Christ still is teaching.  I ask questions of Christ in search of an answer; Christ asks questions of me in effort to draw forth a clearer thought.  Christ and I experience a Moment and then the Lord makes me pause … to reflect on that Moment.  Christ calls me to serve in an act of obedience and in my obeying a greater Truth is revealed.

My view of Scripture is that it is not a fence around the Truth but rather the center point of the Truth with our understanding grower ever greater as Time goes by.  So I learn from reading and reliving the scriptural history, and I learn from the life of ongoing, listening prayer, and I learn from the Spirit Christ has shared with humanity in this School of a More Perfect Love.

Always in Christ’s Service,

Fr. Charitas de la Cruz