In our Second Reading, St Peter says to us: “Always have your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you have.” (1 Peter 3:15) To be able to give our answer, we must know what is our hope: What is it that we hope for? Or better: What is it that I hope for? For it is I who must answer when questioned.

Today’s Gospel begins with Jesus saying to us, “If you love me, show it by doing what I’ve told you.” (John 14:15) We all want to do good; we all want to be good … by keeping God’ Law, by doing what Christ commands us. But our reality is best summed up by St Paul: “I know the Law but I can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realise that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.” (Romans 7:-20) We hear Christ’s call to be good, but we can’t do it. So, in our helplessness, all we can say to him is: “How can this be?” (Luke 1:34)

It is to our reality that Jesus speaks to this morning: “I will talk to my Father and he will give you another Helper, the Holy Spirit of Truth, who will be to you a friend just like me—and he will never leave you.” (John 14:16-17. Cf: Luke 1:35) Our only hope lies in this Helper coming to us, as one who comes to help his friend do what he cannot do. (Cf: Job 16:21; Romans 8:26-27) So, taking it on trust, we begin to have a go at trying to be good … knowing full well that, as usual, we most probably will not succeed again, but nonetheless, we have another go anyway. St Benedict’s word to us is: “We must prepare our hearts and bodies for the battle of holy obedience to his instructions. What is not possible to us by nature, let us ask God to supply by the help of his grace.” (Rule of St Benedict [RB] Prologue:40-41) It is a battle, which we must engage in, if we are to win. But this means that we will not win every skirmish; some will not go so well. So Benedict says to us, “Every time you begin a good work, you must pray to him most earnestly to bring it to perfection.” (RB Prologue:4)

st pray to him most earnestly to bring it to perfection.” (RB Prologue:4) Our hope of being able to do the good we want to do is nurtured through our praying most earnestly. But here St Paul says to us: “We do not know what we need to ask for it in prayer, so the Spirit intercedes for us with unexpressed groaning.” (Romans 8:26) Our very desire to do the good we want to do, accompanied though it is by our not knowing how our desire might ever be able to come to fruition, is itself the Helper come on us and working within us. We don’t even need to put our prayer into words; we just need to feel the groaning within us and say, “Amen!” And, having prayed, we will find within us a growing though tentative confidence, which begins to persuade us to dare to believe—even though just a perhaps—that maybe it is true that “nothing is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37) … and maybe even for me (Luke 1:48); and this helps buoy us up. So, having prayed, we can and do get up and go on to have another go. This is our hope at work within us; this Holy Spirit come upon us is the hope within us. (Cf: Luke 1:37)

Jesus says to us, “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.” (John 15:26) In like manner, Benedict says: “If you notice something good in yourself, give credit to God, but be certain that the evil you commit is always your own and yours to acknowledge.” (RB 4:42-43)When we find that we do do the good we want to do, we must know that the Holy Spirit has indeed come upon us, and give God the glory. (Cf: Luke 1:46-49) Then we will truly know that Christ has, indeed, been “raised up to right hand side of God,” where “he is living forever to intercede for all who come to God through him”—just as he said he would. (Romans 8:34; Hebrews 7:25;John 16:7) And in his gift of this Holy Spirit, in our doing the good we want to do, if we listen quietly, we hear God say to us in a whisper, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased”—and we will know ourselves to be “children of God,” and know God to be our “Father,” and know his Son, Jesus, to be our brother. (Mark 1:11; Romans 8:15-16, 29. Cf: 1 Kings 19:12; John 1:12)Then, as Jesus puts it to us this morning: “When that day comes, you will know that I am living in the Father and that you are one with me, for I will be living in you.” (John 14:20. Cf: 14:23)Here our hope has been fulfilled. (Cf: Romans 8:24)

But, as St Paul puts it: “Hope that is seen is not hope—for who would hope for what we do not see? So we hope for what we do not see, and with patience we eagerly expect it.” (Romans 8:24-25) Our reality is: “The good we want to do is not what we do.” And if we look around at our world, and even in our Church, we will find plenty of evidence that this is so. But our hope points us to other evidence. When we see a truly good person, we must know that Christ’s Spirit is active in the world; we must let this blow softly and enkindle our hope: “I want what he’s got. Amen!” (Cf: 1 John 3:2) Then, when we find some “good in ourselves,” we must let ourselves believe that Christ’s Spirit is on us, and be willing to give our witness to this … by way of the “encouragement” we give to others who are likewise struggling to do the good they want to do, by sharing with them our own struggles … that we may be for them a “helper,” urging them to keep on going, keep on trying. (Romans 12:8; 15:1-2) The help our Christian Hope brings truly is real help. (Cf: Galatians 6:1-2)

Our hope is tied to the Holy Spirit, which Christ in going to the Father has sent into the world—whose coming we will celebrate shortly on Pentecost Day. Our hope, then, is a real hope, and not just wishful, pie-in the-sky thinking. Christ has come; Christ has died; Christ has been raised up—and we believe this. We have his word that he will send his Spirit on us, and at Pentecost we acknowledge that he has sent it. This is something we can rely on. Clinging to our hope will and should fill us with the joy of knowing that our hope can and will be fulfilled. (Hebrews 3:6; Romans 8:24-25. Cf: Luke 1:37, 45) As St Paul puts it: “But that’s not all! Even in times of trouble we have a joyful confidence, knowing that our struggles will develop in us patient endurance. And patient endurance will refine our character, and proven character leads us back to hope. And this hope is not a disappointing fantasy, because we can now experience the endless love of God cascading into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who lives in us!”(Romans 5:3-5. Cf: RB 7:67-69) And we will find ourselves “running on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love.” (RB Prologue:49) It is as St Benedict has it: “All this the Lord will by the Holy Spirit graciously manifest in his workman now cleansed of vices and sins.” (RB 7:70) Our hope fills us with a joy, a confident optimism, even in tough times, which we must firmly cling to, right till the end (Hebrews 3:6)—it is probably this, our joy in living, that will see people asking us the reason for our hope, and this especially so when our world is filled with dark storm clouds as it is today, and we must be ready to tell them. (1 Peter 3:15)