Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter
(Acts 16:11-15; John 16:5-11)
It is said that St. Augustine avoided preaching on today’s
gospel because of its difficulty! Still,
the passage is not impossible to understand.
To do so, however, we should note that the word convict is too literal a translation of the Greek and does not fit
well with each object. It would be
better to say that the Spirit Advocate proves the world wrong regarding sin, regarding
righteousness, and regarding condemnation.
The world sees Christians as sinful for believing in
Jesus. This may seem odd since we have a
sense that the world does not really care about what one believes. But the Roman world, at least, had its
deities to which people were expected to give homage. Because of their ancient status, Jews were a
recognized exception to this rule which gave Christians immunity for a while. But when Christians were expelled from the
synagogues, the Romans persecuted them as atheists. The Spirit Advocate (really more a
prosecuting attorney) will show the world that the Romans, not the Christians,
worship false gods.
The error of righteousness concerns the Jews’ putting Jesus
to death for claiming to be God’s son.
The Spirit, moving Christians to love one another, shows them to be righteous,
not those who crucified Jesus. The final error regards the condemnation of
Satan, the prince of this world. Since
Jesus is vindicated by his resurrection, his adversary Satan is condemned. We might ask, “Then how can Satan roam freely
seeking our ruination?” The gospel would
reply that Satan is powerless over true believers; moreover, his limited
domination will end once Jesus returns in glory.
