Daily Reading
First Reading
Proverbs 8:22-31
The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.
Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth—
when he had not yet made earth and fields,
or the world’s first bits of soil.
When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master worker;
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing before him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.
Psalm
Psalm 8:4-5, 6-7, 8-9
What are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under their feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
O Lord, our Sovereign,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Second Reading
Romans 5:1-5
Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
Gospel Reading
John 16:12-15
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
Reflection
Friends, today’s Gospel declares that when the Spirit comes, he will guide us into all truth. There is a story I’ve heard about Jean-Luc Marion that, if it isn’t true, should be. In the midst of a lively lecture on Descartes, a student asked a pointed question about God. Marion looked at her and said, “Go to Sunday Mass for a year and then return and ask me that question again.”
Marion’s response was not just a clever one-liner. If true knowledge of God depends upon immersion in the Holy Spirit, then that knowledge is a function of an entire form of life, involving prayer, self-denial, the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, and the forgiveness of one’s enemies. We don’t think our way to an understanding of God so much as we live our way to it.
Thomas Aquinas always said that he owed his theology far more to the persistence of his prayer than to the acuity of his mind. His penetration of the divine mystery flowed from his life in the Holy Spirit. And so today we pray, “Come, Holy Spirit, come!”