Wherein He shows too that He Himself is the Comforter. Paraclete means advocate, and is applied to Christ: Wehave an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous (1 Jn 2:1).
Yet to show that His works are inseparable from His Father’s, He says below, When I shall go, I will send Him to you.
This is the Holy Spirit in the Trinity, Whom the Catholic faith professes to be consubstantial and coeternal with the Father and the Son.
Thus the world, i.e. the lovers of the world, cannot, He says, receive the Holy Spirit: that is to say, unrighteousness cannot be righteous. The world,i.e. the lovers of the world, cannot receive Him, because it sees Him not. The love of the world has not invisible eyes wherewith to see that which can only be seen invisibly. It follows: But you know Him, for He dwells with you. And that they might not think this I meant a visible dwelling, in the sense in which we use the phrase with respect to a guest, Headds, And shall be in you.
To be in a place is prior to dwelling. Be in you, is the explanation of dwell with you: i.e. shows that the latter means not that He is seen, but that Heis known. He must be in us, that the knowledge of Him may be in us. We see the Holy Spirit then in us, in our consciences.
Comforter, the title of the Holy Spirit, the third Person in the Trinity, the Apostle applies to God: God that comforts those that are cast down, comforted us. The Holy Spirit therefore Who comforts those that are cast down, is God. Or if they still have this said by the Apostle of the Father or the Son, let them not any longer separate the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, in His peculiar office of comforting.
But when the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts bythe Holy Spirit which is given unto us (Rom 5:5), how shall we love and keep the commandments of Christ, so as to receive the Spirit, when we are not able to love or to keep them, unless we have received the Spirit? Does love in us go first, i.e. do we so love Christ and keep His commandments as to deserve to receive the Holy Spirit, and to have the love of God the Father shod abroad in our hearts? This is a perverse opinion. For he who does not love the Father, does not love the Son, however he may think he does. It remains for us to understand, that he who loves has the Holy Spirit, and by having Him, attains to having more of Him, and by having more of Him, to loving more. The disciples had already the Spirit which our Lord promised; but they were to be given more of Him: they had Him secretly, they were to receive Him openly. The promise is made both to him who has the Spirit, and to him who has Him not; to the former, that he shall have Him; to the latter, that He shall have more of Him.
