The Spirit Who Reminds Us of Christ

“I have told you this while I am with you. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name—he will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.”

These are Jesus’ words—spoken, according to today's Gospel, before his death. But they are not preserved as a historical transcript. They come to us now as proclamation, as kerygma, as the Word of God breaking into our lives. The Jesus who once walked among people is no longer with us in history. He has been crucified, dead, and buried. And yet, in the mystery of faith, we proclaim him as the Christ—not because we have seen him risen, but because we have heard his Word as a living address to us.

This is what the Spirit does. Not a ghostly power or magical force, but the very presence of God as event—as the encounter that lays claim to our existence. “He will remind you of all that I told you,” Jesus says. But this is no mere act of memory. It is the Spirit awakening us again and again to the Word that interrupts us, confronts us, and calls us to authentic life.

The Christ is not a figure we can grasp or hold onto, not a doctrine we can preserve in glass. Christ is the name we give to the Word that comes to us in the present, calling us into decision, into faith, into new being. The Spirit makes that Word audible. The Spirit reminds us—not by pointing us back to the past, but by re-speaking the Word in our today.

This is why the Church exists—not to preserve relics of a vanished past, but to proclaim the living Word here and now. The Spirit gathers us into this proclamation. When we preach, when we break bread, when we forgive one another, the Spirit is at work—not as some added presence, but as the act of God that brings the Word of Christ to bear on our lives.

And so the question this Gospel leaves us with is not, What did Jesus once say? but rather, What is the Spirit saying now? Where does the Word confront you today? What old securities is it calling you to leave behind? What new life is it awakening in you?

Let us listen—not to our nostalgia, not to the voice of certainty—but to the Advocate, the Spirit who does not leave us comfortless, but sends the Word of Christ into the depths of our own time, our own heart, our own trembling decisions.

Christ speaks. Let us hear.