Who Will Teach Us?

We have little problem understanding how love is an action. We can see love: the care parents give children, the care adult children give their elderly parents, the generosity of youth in responding to disasters, the goodness of volunteers who keep many good programs viable. These are observable if we but open our eyes to see.
 
Yet we rarely think of believing as an action. Yet it is. Believing is as concrete and visible an action as love.
 

In our Gospel, Jesus promises to send us the Holy Spirit who will teach us everything. The holy Spirit does not teach us what to believe but to believe. To believe means to live out of the divine indwelling, to live out of the peace given, to live out of the mutual exchange of love between God and us and each other. Believing is living what the Spirit teaches us. Believing is an action that marries love with presence.
 

The peace we receive is not an absence of strife or contention, but the fruit of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. Such love God gives us. We need not be troubled. We only need to love in return. Here is what is wholly new-God wells within us! This union between God and humanity is made possible by Jesus’ farewell gift- the ‘Holy Spirit.