Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples that when he returns to the Father he will send the Advocate to be with them. 

This “Advocate” is presumed to be ontologically one with the Father and the Son. Jesus says, “He (the parakletos) will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you. Everything that the Father has is mine; for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.”

In receiving the Spirit, the Church, throughout the course of its history, will take on the identity of the Son, an identity rooted, in turn, in the Father. Every saint across the centuries represents a unique living out of this fundamental to-be of the Son, reflective of the Father and made possible by the indwelling of the parakletos.

The work of the Spirit is the making present and visible, in an infinitely variegated way across space and time, of the coinherent manner of being that characterizes the Father and the Son.