The Gift of the Holy Ghost: sermon on the fourth Sunday after Easter

By a Dominican Friar   |   14 May 2025

“He shall glorify me, because he shall receive of mine.”

This Sunday being four weeks after Easter, and only three before Pentecost, the Church begins to turn our thoughts toward the third divine Person, the Holy Spirit. Already in the epistle, St James seems to allude to Him, when he says, “Every best and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” If that’s true even of created gifts such as health or beauty or intelligence, how much more true is it of the best Gift of all, concerning whom Christ told the woman at the well, “If you knew the gift of God, you would have asked Me, and I would have given you living water.”

But the Holy Ghost is not only a gift: He is a Person. He is, therefore, someone with whom we may have a personal relationship, as we do, I hope, with the Father and the Son. How do we do this? To have a personal relationship with anyone, we must know him quite well, and we come to know a person by seeing what he or she does. 

What does the Holy Ghost do? In a few words, Christ tells the eleven apostles many things. For example, “When he is come, he will teach you all truth.” The Holy Spirit does this both for the Church as a whole, and, if we are willing, for us in our individual lives. For the Church as a whole, we can think of the ecumenical councils through whom He has spoken down the centuries, especially in the creeds and the other definitions of faith. Or we can think of the doctors of the Church whom He raises up, each in their time, whether great bishops like St Athanasius, whose feast falls this Thursday, or quiet scholars like St Thomas Aquinas, or even, closer to our time, St Therese of Lisieux, a doctor whom the Holy Spirit surely chose in order to make “foolish the wisdom of the wise”. 

What of our own lives? Well, here Christ’s promise is conditional. The Holy Ghost will lead us personally into the truth, but in proportion to how much we wish to be led. We can close our ears. So, a good, brief prayer to make would be this: “Holy Spirit, please teach me some truth that I am reluctant to hear.”

What does our Lord say next? “What things soever he shall hear, he shall speak, and the things that are to come he shall show you.” Not that the Holy Spirit Himself is going to learn something, but that in eternity, He receives His knowledge from the Father speaking the Word: Christ calls this, “hearing”. And after Pentecost, He will show the apostles many things that are to happen. We find, for example, that both St Peter and St Paul know when they are going to die. More than that, the Holy Spirit has inspired a whole book, which describes, albeit in mysterious language, the entire history of the Church from beginning to end: this is the last book of the bible, called Revelation, or the Apocalypse, both of which words literally mean “the unveiling”. Just as a bride was unveiled at the end of a marriage ceremony, so the Holy Spirit unveils the Church, the bride of Christ, at the end of the Scriptures.

Then comes a third and last statement. Christ says, “He shall glorify me, because he shall receive of mine, and shall show it to you.” How does this happen? In eternity, the Holy Spirit, the third divine person received divinity from the second, as the second, the Son, receives it from the Father. And He shows to the apostles what He has received when He gives them a strong and lively faith in this very divinity of Christ. The apostles already had some faith in this, but a weak faith. They loved to be with Jesus, but they were still attached to Him in too human a way. They find it hard to raise their minds to His divinity. That’s why in a couple of hours’ time they will fly from Him so easily. Things will be very different after Pentecost, when St Peter and the others will boldly tell the rulers of the Jews that Christ is “Lord of all”. And the Holy Spirit continues to glorify Christ by showing what is His, whenever He enlightens our minds to believe one or another of Christ’s words. For example, “This is my body”; ”This is my blood”; “Whoever eats my flesh has eternal life”; “Woman, behold your son … Behold, thy mother.” And this suggests another prayer that we could make: “Holy Ghost, make me understand one of Christ’s words more deeply; enlighten my mind; make me a Christian not only in name, but in truth.”