Let us return to where it all began, which would be Holy Thursday night. The place, the Upper Room of the Cenacle in Jerusalem. And the event, what is that but a paschal meal shared by Jesus and his disciples, one of whom will prove treacherous for a few miserable pieces of silver? It is their Last Supper, and the meal having just ended, a cloud of gathering gloom and darkness descends to enshroud his remaining disciples, plunging each in a sorrow that seemingly never ends.

The Apostle John, who was there that night, leaning his head upon the breast of the Master, tells us all we need to know — including the following, which leaves everyone stunned and stricken: “A little while and you will see me no more; again a little while, and you will see me” (John 16:17).

What can this mean? Jesus, seeing their anguish, their confusion, goes on to assure them, even as the sense of mystery deepens: “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy” (16:20). And why is that? Because, however heavy the sorrow they will be forced to bear, Christ will return, and when he does, “I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.

In that day, you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father, he will give it to you in my name. Hitherto, you have asked nothing in my name; ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be complete (16:22-24).

The chapter ends with the disciples exclaiming to Jesus that now at last, “we know that you know all things, and need none to question you; by this we believe that you came from God” (16:30). To which Jesus answers, giving sublime expression to all that we require in the way of faith, hope and love for the journey home to God:

The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, every man to his home, and will leave me alone; yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. I have said thisto you, that in me you may have peace. In the world, you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world (16:33).

What greater consolation could one possibly ask for? That to know with utter moral certitude that the One on whom every promise hangs has vanquished the world? With that in hand, there is nothing left to fear. 

The mighty chord had already been struck two chapters earlier when Jesus told his disciples why he was going away at all. “Let not your hearts be troubled,” he began. “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you too may be” (14:2-3).

So, he’s going away to arrange things on the other side. Meanwhile, what is to become of us in a world where he is no more? I mean, if he’s busy fixing things up for us in Heaven, how are we to cope in his absence down below? How bleak and unbearable Earth would be without him. And the answer, quite simply, is that none of his followers will be left behind, orphaned and alone.

“I will not leave you desolate,” he insists, “I will come to you.” 

Wonderful. But how exactly is that to happen once he has taken leave of the world, his glorified body ascending into Heaven? It will happen, he tells us, in the very life of the Holy Spirit, who, in the Pentecostal fire of divine love, will fall upon all who are joined to Jesus, just as the branches are joined to the vine so that they may bear fruit. 

The poet Eliot, in the penultimate movement from Four Quartets, gives us an unforgettable expression of this mystery: “The dove descending breaks the air,” he tells us,

With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre —
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

And to whom are we to assign so exquisite a torment? The answer, says Eliot, is “Love.”

Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

This may not be exactly the idiom in which Jesus Christ delivers his saving message, but the sense and the intention are the same. “These things I have spoken to you, while I am still with you,” Jesus tells them:

But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. (14:25-27)

Two promises have thus been given, one for eternity, which is without end, the other for time, which is the condition of this contingent world. Two profoundly mysterious gifts, vouchsafed to those whom he would love to the very last: the gift of everlasting life and the capacity to endure even this life. Both entrusted to the Bride, on whose behalf he has chosen, out of an incomprehensible depth of love, to empty out his life.

Understandably, therefore, upon his taking leave of those he first loved in the world, Jesus will be at great pains to assure them that he is not simply tossing their lives and futures to the four winds. But that they, and all who will later anneal themselves to Christ in the life of his Church, shall be guided and shaped across that great and fearful sea of human history by a very special wind, namely, the Breath of God’s own Spirit, who will infallibly confer both comfort and counsel upon his Pilgrim People as they make their way home to God.

The Lord says, “I am with you always,” and by the shedding of his blood, he clearly means it, “until the close of the age,” to quote the very last line of the Gospel of St. Matthew (28:19).

And what is the form this being-with-us in Christ takes? Nothing less than the Holy Ghost himself, who, as the poet Hopkins so beautifully puts it, “broods over the bent world with warm breast and with ah bright wings.” The Third Person of the Blessed Trinity himself, who, from all eternity, breathes forth the love between the Father and the Son. It is he who will be God’s very presence within us, in our innermost being, even as he remains effortlessly and forever beyond us, nestled in the company of the Eternal Godhead.

And so, just as Christmas comes every day to those who, like Our Blessed Lady, welcome him in womb and breast, so too will Pentecost unfailingly come each day to those who, like the first Apostles, welcome the mighty and merciful Spirit into their hearts and their homes.