Prov. 8:22–31 / Ps. 8:4–9 / Rom. 5:1–5 / Jn. 16:12–15
In today’s liturgy, we’re swept through time in glorious procession — from before earth and sky were set in place to the coming of the Spirit upon the new creation, the Church.
We begin in the heart of the Trinity, as we listen to the testimony of wisdom in today’s First Reading. Eternally begotten, the firstborn of God, he is poured forth from of old in the loving delight of the Father.
Through him, the heavens were established, the foundations of the earth fixed. From before the beginning, he was with the Father as his “Craftsman,” the artisan by which all things were made. And he took special delight, he tells us, in the crowning glory of God’s handiwork — the human race, the “sons of men.”
In today’s Psalm, he comes down from heaven, is made a little lower than the angels, comes among us as “the Son of Man” (see Hebrews 2:6–10).
All things are put under his feet so that he can restore to humanity the glory for which we were made from the beginning, the glory lost by sin. He tasted death that we might be raised to life in the Trinity, that his name might be made glorious over all the earth.
Through the Son, we have gained grace and access in the Spirit to the Father, as Paul boasts in today’s Epistle (see Ephesians 2:18).
The Spirit, the love of God, has been poured out into our hearts — a Spirit of adoption, making us children of the Father once more (see Romans 8:14–16).
This is the Spirit that Jesus promises in today’s Gospel.
His Spirit comes as divine gift and anointing (see 1 John 2:27), to guide us to all truth, to show us “the things that are coming,” the things that were meant to be from before all ages — that we will find peace and union in God, will share the life of the Trinity, dwell in God as he dwells in us (see John 14:23; 17:21).
