Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish

FR MICHAEL BIBLICAL IMAGERY

(Fr Michael Boakye Yeboah: Vice Rector of St Gregory Seminary, Kumasi-Ghana)

PRAYER OF ADVOCACY

            In today’s readings, prayer is presented to us in the form of advocacy.  Some prayers come in the form of thanksgiving but this prayer of Jesus in today’s Gospel and the disciples’ prayer in the first reading can be seen as prayer of advocacy. The word advocacy comes from the Latin ‘advocare’ which literally means ‘to call out for support.’ The origins of advocacy date back to ancient Rome and Greece when well-established orators would perform as advocates or wrote orations specifically for pleading someone’s cause. Personalities such as Cicero and Caesar were among the greatest Roman lawyers and advocates. If advocacy means ‘a call out for support’, then our world needs to call out for support from Jesus. The need for prayers takes the center stage in today’s readings.

            In the light of the days leading up to Pentecost, we can view today’s Gospel, which contains the beginning of the great prayer of Jesus at his departure from the world, as a prayer to the Father for the sending of the Holy Spirit. It is spoken just as he is making the transition from the world to the Father: “I am in the world no more, I come to you”. Already “authority over all mankind has been given him” but at first Jesus could make known the name of the Father, and thereby eternal life, only to a few. Because Jesus is departing, they must be prayed for, and he does so in order that they truly understand what is means to be one with him as he is one with the Father.

            It is a prayer to the Father for the sending of the Holy Spirit, the advocate. Because Jesus was departing, he saw the need to pray for his disciples. Jesus’ Prayer is the prayer of advocacy and the advocacy includes the question of the Holy Spirit, whom he has promised to send to his own from the Father.

            In the first reading, the Church does what Jesus commanded her to do. Jesus’ disciples, together with Mary, the women, and the brothers of Jesus, “persisted with one accord in prayer” for the promised Spirit. We dare not neglect those precise instructions from Jesus, as if we thought that someone who has been baptized and is not aware of having committed any serious sin automatically possesses the Holy Spirit. As Holy Spirit he can enter only someone who is “poor in spirit”, that is, someone who has emptied and opened up his own spirit to make room for the Spirit of God. The assembled community’s prayer requests this poverty in order to make room for the riches of the Spirit. How exquisite that Mary, the perfectly poor vessel of the Holy Spirit, remain among those praying and fills out any incomplete or wavering prayer with her perfect prayer. Through her, supplication for heaven’s gift is perfected, and that supplication will be infallibly heard.

            The loving Church prays for the best. St Peter’s letter (second reading) adds a footnote. He repeats one of the Lord’s Beatitudes: “Blessed are you if you are insulted for Jesus’ name”, and he adds immediately, “for the Spirit of glory, the Spirit of God, rests upon you.” It is as if suffering humiliation for Christ’s sake itself is a prayer for the Spirit that will immediately be heard, a prayer that indeed is answered in the suffering itself, so that one can endure it in the Spirit of God rather than in dejection or rebellion. What is shameful from an earthly perspective should not be perceived by the Christian as something to be “ashamed” of, rather, he should know that precisely therein he glorifies God. The Acts of the Apostles will confirm this at many points, as will the story of the saints throughout Church history. It is perhaps the persecuted and humiliated Church that can most purely pray for God’s Spirit. She needs what she prays for and she has what she prays for. God will answer our prayers in his own time.