6th Week of Easter – Monday B

We remember a wonderful promise today given by our good and gracious Lord in the gospel regarding the gift of the Person of the Holy Spirit. 

night before heading 16 kilometers north to Neapolis, the seaport for the major town of Philippi, in Macedonia. Philippi had been turned into a Roman colony back then, completely Latinized, and governed much like Rome itself was governed. There were few Jews here in Philippi, but many retired soldiers from Roman legions. Paul writes one of his most beautiful letters in the New Testament to the Philippians who had converted to Christianity.

After spending some times with them, Paul and his companions needed to pray this one particular Sabbath day. They went outside the city looking for an ideal place where this could be done. This an interesting detail which reminds us of how we too need appropriate environments, conducive to prayer, that can help us be silent and focus.

Given the scarcity of Jews in Philippi, there most likely would not have been a synagogue and so they find a place, as Paul says, “along the river outside the gates” which would have been the Gangites River. It is here that they encounter a number of women, most likely getting the household laundries done at the banks of the river, but that detail isn’t given to us, and among them was a dealer in purple-dyed goods from Thyatira, by the name of Lydia. Thyatira was another Roman province, this time in Asia, famous for its dye-works, especially crimson. A community of believers would be founded there and they would be mentioned twice in the book of Revelation (1:11, 2:18). We are safely going to assume that Lydia was a wealthy woman given purple-dyed goods were expensive and only worn by rich people. The rich man in the parable of ‘ The Rich man and Lazarus’ was clothed in fine purple (Luke 16:19-31). Lydia dealt in this stuff, so she was definitely from money.

Lydia, however, was a follower of the God of the Jews, even though she was a gentile. We can see how fertile her heart would have been to receiving the message of Paul as regards Jesus, and sure enough, through the grace of God, like Cornelius before her, she and her whole household (family members and servants) were all baptized.

Lydia invites Paul and his companions to stay at her home, which most likely then would have been a big house, yet Paul is reluctant. This is probably due to our Lord’s request that the apostles stay in the first house which offers them shelter in any town, and not move around from house to house, but in this one case, Paul seems to make an exception, most likely as he would have seen it as a potential meeting place for future converts. Also, Lydia would not take “no” for an answer. In this we have a lesson, to discern what prudent ministry looks like. Yet each of us, need to be prudent that the message remains intact and that scandal be avoided, sometimes even the appearance of scandal needs to be avoided for the sake of those who are weaker in the faith. In any case, Philippi becomes the first European centre to hear the Christian message which continues to flourish to this day. Again, Paul who remained steadfast in the Lord, along with his companions, are planting and reaping much fruit as a result. The same can be said of us, through God’s grace, if we remain in Christ.

In today’s gospel, and as we draw nearer to the great Feast of Pentecost, the Lord begins speaking more emphatically about the Holy Spirit. He told the apostles with very specific details, that the Holy Spirit will come to them from both the Father and Jesus himself, and he is given two titles by the Lord: 1) the Advocate, and 2) the Spirit of Truth. The Greek word used for Advocate, is “parakletos”, which means a person who stands by another and gives support. In some translations, rather than Advocate, the name Paraclete is therefore given. At the beginning of his Second Letter to the Corinthians, Paul uses variations of the word in its various forms about eight times (1:3-7). The first thing to note therefore is that Jesus himself is describing him not as a force, but as a Person. Something Saint Athanasius as we just saw in his feast, was adamant on. The Holy Spirit is a divine Person; infinite, eternal, and almighty, just like the Father and the Son.

Jesus is also here indicating to the apostles that some difficult days are coming for them, especially when they see what happens to the good Lord himself, but they will also be thrown out of synagogues, imprisoned, and even killed on account of the name of Jesus. They will need courage and strength and boldness. They will need the Holy Spirit to guide them into all truth, as we have already been seeing in the dilemmas they had come up against concerning the Mosaic law versus the newness that has been wrought in Jesus, for through his empowerment, they would give witness.