John 14:15-16, 23b-26

A few months before my father died, he wrote a letter addressed to my mum and all the siblings. We did not know it until the funeral day. It was a short letter written with so much love and affection for the family especially his grandchildren.

Dad loved to write in cursive style and I’ve always loved to watch him take special care in writing as well as the content of what he writes. He could write on anything from old cardboards to used A4 papers, and would still looked stunning.

This letter he left us was SPECIAL. Dad wrote in beautiful cursive the words, “There is only one thing I desire that you love your mother and one another with the love I’ve shown you”. This is for me the key to understanding the life of my father in his intimate union with his loved ones who are left behind.

I believe it is the same if we are to understand the life and mission of Jesus on this Pentecost Sunday.  We have to dig deep and explore his intimate union with the Father and the Advocate, a communion of perfect life which Jesus came to share with us. In John chapter seventeen, we hear Jesus’ personal prayer to the Father,

“May they all be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you, so that they also may be in us” (Jn 17,21).

As a religious missionary, this is the key to our missionary life, too, in “a community caught up in the mission of the Son sent from the Father to the world” (Divine Word Missionary Constitution 301). Like them and with them, we are all sent to make it possible for others to enter the fullness of life.

However there is no authentic mission without an intimate union and communion with the Advocate whom Jesus is sending in the Father’s name.

Jesus knew that his final days on earth were fast approaching so he promised to send another Advocate to be with His disciples. He knew that they would need the Triune God’s help to face the world. He did not want them to do it all by themselves. Hence there is no mission without the guidance and inspiration of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who sends the Church to keep the dangerous memory of Jesus alive to the glory of God the Father. The Church has no choice but to continue to pray with the Spirit of Jesus & the Father wherever she is present. This is the origin and the goal of our mission as disciples. Any personal and communal attempt to stifle this communion with the Spirit of God is clearly the first obstacle to belief and love to making the Triune God a dwelling place within our hearts.

My father’s loving desire before he died was to extend his love from beyond his death-bed. My father didn’t have to write a letter. Jesus left a huge legacy far beyond what our hearts could fathom. He didn’t write a letter. However He left it with the Advocate to work with his disciples hence the priceless Word of God. The disciples knew it in their hearts that Jesus’ love for them was tangible and will never die.

While dad’s human love is also an extension and expression of God’s love, it is the Advocate that keeps the experience of love alive. My father too was caught up in that kind of enduring love. Now it is I and my family’s turn to live his desire for the unifying love through the guidance of the Holy Spirit in our family and beyond.

I have no doubt that my father did enjoy the enriching presence and abiding love of the Holy Spirit.  As I approach his one year of death anniversary tomorrow, may this same Spirit of Pentecost gently take him under Her wings into eternal life.