The advocate will teach you all things

“Now I am going to the one who sent me,…

because I told you this, grief has filled your hearts.
But I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go.
For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you.
But if I go, I will send him to you.
And when he comes he will convict the world
in regard to sin and righteousness and condemnation:
sin, because they do not believe in me;
righteousness, because I am going to the Father
and you will no longer see me;
condemnation, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.”

The words are Christ’s, said prior to the horrors he would shortly face-horrors that the disciples had no understanding of.

Nor do we.

We Christians hear those words frequently in the liturgy preceding Pentecost. But until recently, I had never considered the Holy Spirit-Holy Ghost- as a lawyer. But that is the meaning of the word advocate.

“I will send you an advocate and He will teach you all things.” To whom is the Lord speaking when He makes this promise? To His Disciples and Apostles, we reply automatically. But to the rest of humanity, baptized, unbaptized, believers, and non-believers?

A resounding yes!

I can speak from personal experience. Although I had no idea then what it was, I have seen the Spirit. There was no human form in the shape of Lady Justice; instead, I saw amorphous light: blinding, intense, and invasive.

The first time was in a college philosophy classroom watching a Dominican priest outline Aquinas’ Hierarchy of Being on the blackboard. Still dazed and lost from my late-teen experience, which convinced me that Jesus, religion, and faith were mere fantasies, I was seriously considering suicide.

Standing in his long black robes, his right hand started at the bottom of the board, in broad sweeping strokes of the chalk on the blackboard, wrote, “Archangels,” above that “Principalities,” and then “Virtues” on to the “Seraphim.” The entire board was covered. I sat staring at the words, wholly uncomprehending of them. It felt as if I were looking at an alien language. And began to ponder while gaping at the board that this was an absolute fabrication, none of this existed, there was no God.

But there was none of the sarcastic teen I had been before in my thoughts. None of the wisecracking quoter of Nietzsche’s “God is dead, he choked to death on Theology” that I parroted on frequent occasions mostly to achieve the satisfying shock the comment generally elicited from my listener. There was just despair, pure and black. And I sat wondering if it just would not be far simpler to end all this. The more I considered the idea of suicide, the faster the bleak thoughts flashed through my mind.

When abruptly, the entire panel of windows lit up. I was seated right by the blackboard, five rows away from the wall of windows which were so bright that I was convinced that it had finally happened. Russia had dropped a bomb. World War III had begun.

But the Monseigneur continued to stand by the board and drone on about the Seraphim. And all of my classmate’s heads were bent toward their notes as if assiduously taking down every word out of the priest’s mouth. Only then did I realize that no one in the room saw what I did.

In awe, I sat watching the brilliance which lit up the entire wall of windows. My heart rate accelerated, and the blackness and suicidal thoughts disappeared entirely leaving something which I could not name, but I knew it, almost recognized it.

Then a powerful impression of peace enveloped me, almost like a blanket. That night, I went home and wrote a poem. I called it the Divine Spark, a tiny light which existed somewhere in me, somewhere deep but there and connected me to something I could not name. That was the first time I saw the light. There would be others.

Finding the Narrow Path

Why write about this strange-even eerie- experience today?

On this Pentecost Sunday, 2025, I’m compelled to remind myself where I came from.

And why I’m no longer there.

Our histories are important, even, maybe especially, those periods we look back on with sadness and regret.

Why?

The blinding light in the University of Saint Thomas windows healed me: existential dread was gone and never recurred. Unable to deny its uniquely personal message, the experience simmered, readying me for the belief and faith that would come after I finally stopped trying to live this life alone and dropped to my knees.

It’s the decision we each must make.

The memory is critical because it instills confidence, hope, and knowledge that this highly publicized godlessness is a lie. The youth of the world are rejecting the darkness in historic numbers. Just look at what thousands of young Brits and French are doing: dropping to their knees.

With Christ’s ascension into heaven, he brings us, each of his lost sheep. Far from a single event 2000 years ago, the Ascension matters this day, every day. “We must see the ninety-nine sheep as a representation of the Powers, Principalities and Dominations whom the Head and Shepherd has left behind to go down and seek out the one lost sheep.”  Gregory of Nyssa adds: “We mankind, are the lost sheep…and have strayed from the other spiritual creates [i.e. the angels].”

Christ is the Light of nations…Though they differ from one another in essence and not only in degree, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood are nonetheless interrelated: each of them in its own special way is a participation in the one priesthood of Christ.(2*)…reborn as sons of God they must confess before men the faith which they have received from God through the Church (4*). They are more perfectly bound to the Church by the sacrament of Confirmation, and the Holy Spirit endows them with special strength so that they are more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith, both by word and by deed, as true witnesses of Christ (5*).

Lumen Gentium

The Advocate will teach you all things…