On this great feast of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended so powerfully upon the Church to launch her missionary activity, we would do well to consider how nothing - absolutely nothing - of value would happen in our soul, or in the Church, without the action of the Spirit. As a famous preacher once said, without the Spirit, the Church would be like a train with all its cars-possibly all well communicated, each of them perhaps very well decorated-but without its locomotive. Without a locomotive there is no movement. Without the Spirit there is no life in the Church. That is why St. Paul said to the Corinthians: "no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit." (1 Cor 12:3). In other words, we need to be prompted by the Spirit even for the most basic act of faith.
In today's Gospel, Jesus talks about the Spirit "helping us" or being our "lawyer". In Greek it is said parakletoswhich means counselor, consoler, the one called to be at our side, the one who takes our side. And, in various places in Scripture, we see the Spirit helping the Church and souls to draw closer to God and to follow his call. At times, this help consists in pushing the Church and its members into missionary activity. Beginning at Pentecost this is something we see throughout the Acts of the Apostles (e.g., Acts 13:1-3) and, indeed, throughout the Church's subsequent history. To set someone in motion is also to help them, and it is also to help the people they reach. This can also involve helping us to overcome our prejudices in order to reach people we would otherwise dismiss (e.g., Acts 10:19-20).
Elsewhere we see how the Spirit "helps" us to pray. As St. Paul writes to the Romans "In the same way, the Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with ineffable groanings." (Rom 8:26). And, as today's second reading teaches, the Spirit helps us, "leads" us, to appreciate more and more our condition as children of God, to the point that we can cry out to God "Abba! (Papa!) Father!".
Finally, as Jesus says at the end of today's Gospel, even the Spirit, as the best of teachers, helps us to "remember," to take to heart, all the words of our Lord. Guided by the Spirit, we deepen the teaching of Christ: he enters into us and we enter more and more into his life.
