“I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth.” Jesus in today’s Gospel, John 14:8-17.
‘Admission as advocates….involves a process of examination and practical instruction known as devilling.’ The Faculty of Advocates in Scotland.
Today is Pentecost, fifty days after Easter and originally celebrated in the Old Testament as the Spring Harvest when the first fruits of wheat were presented. It’s now also known as the birthday of the Church, being the time when, after receiving the Holy Spirit, the disciples started to spread the Good News amongst the people they met and began the Church itself.
More than two thousand years later, the task continues as followers today face the challenge of communicating the Good News and truth in a world where bad news and lies seem so often to dominate the headlines. That has been highlighted this week in the ongoing row between the world’s most powerful man, President Trump, and the richest man in the world, Elon Musk. He called Trump’s forthcoming legislation, “massive, outrageous……a disgusting abomination” whilst Musk was termed, “the man who has lost his mind” by the President. Formerly, a good relationship had seemed to prevail but the trading of these and other insults led the Daily Mirror to comment, ‘The world’s biggest kids are still bickering’ and to observe that, ‘The egos have landed.’ It’s a costly business for them both, in terms of reputation and truth as well as finances.
It was a costly business for Jesus, too, as he spoke with his followers on the night before he died to assure them that another Advocate would come to them after he left. That’s now a legal term, meaning to ‘add’ a ‘voice’ of support for a person or cause and may involve devilling – the preparation and checking of documents for possible challenges in the details and fine print. It’s sometimes said that the devil is in the detail and, whether thought of as an actual figure or representing the power of evil, devilish contradictions and complexities may seem to abound today, contradicting the Spirit of truth which Jesus also mentioned.
According to the account in Acts the Advocate, the Spirit of which Jesus spoke, enabled communication so that people of all languages could understand what they were being told. Despite the negativity and confusion created by Trump, Musk and so many others, Pentecost is a reminder that better communication and understanding can prevail if we allow our own voices to echo the Advocacy of the Holy Spirit’s guidance and clarification. That continues to birth not only the Church but a different and more hopeful way of living – may this new phase not faze us!
With my prayers; pob bendith,
Christine, Priest Guardian.