In today’s Gospel, our Lord Jesus Christ prepares us to receive the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, and everything that comes with receiving this gift from our Father in heaven. Let us listen to the words of our Lord, who says: “When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me. And you also testify. . .” I am reminded of this prayer from the Order of Baptism, during the “Ephaphatha” Rite: “May the Lord Jesus, who made the deaf to hear and the mute to speak, grant that you may soon receive his word with your ears and profess the faith with your lips, to the glory and praise of God the Father.”
Through our Baptism, we are called to listen to the Word of God and speak His Truth in the world. However, Jesus knows that to follow him can be difficult because we will face opposition from those who “have not known either the Father or me” and yet “think he is offering worship to God.” In today’s Gospel, like he does so many times throughout his ministry, our Lord Jesus Christ is upfront with us about the cost to come follow him and be his disciples. It is precisely this reason that Jesus “have told [us] this so that [we] may not fall away,” but be strengthened by the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, who he sends from the Father.
My sisters and brothers in Christ, every time I teach a Baptism class or celebrate the Sacrament of Baptism, I encourage the parents and godparents to live their lives as authentic witnesses of our Lord Jesus Christ, in their words and actions, in such a way that their children and godchildren desire to become disciples of Jesus. What this means for all of us is, we must desire faith, conversion, and transformation in our lives for it to happen because God gives us freewill to come and follow Him through the Holy Spirit that He sends to us. We must cultivate our hearts through faith in God, like Lydia in today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostle, who “listened and the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what Paul was saying. After she and her household had been baptized.”
This desire for us to listen to the Word of God with open and attentive hearts and be transformed into disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ reminds me of this “Prayer for Vocations” that I will now share with you.
Jesus our Saviour, your sacred Heart felt compassion when you looked upon the crowd and saw that they were like sheep with a shepherd. We know that the harvest of souls is abundant but the laborers few, so we ask you, the master of the harvest, to send our more laborers. [and here is the hinge] Open my hearts and the hearts of my brothers and sisters to your will and raise up abundant faithful servants of the Gospel - devoted and holy priests, sisters and brothers who will spend themselves for your people in the Diocese of Austin. May none of your flock, won at the price of your blood, be without a shepherd to guide them. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
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