What did Christ leave unsaid on the night he was betrayed?
Christ made some elements of doctrine crystal clear, while left others to develop over time—but why?
Christ made some elements of doctrine crystal clear, while left others to develop over time—but why?
Editor’s Notes
Some Context
This Gospel passage is read on the Third Sunday after Easter. They are taken from Christ’s final words to the Apostles in the Cenacle, on the night of Maundy Thursday, immediately before leaving for Gethsemane.
In this text, Christ prepares the Apostles for his imminent Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension, veiling the horror of his suffering in tender promises of returning joy, future clarity, and power in prayer through the Holy Ghost.
He teaches how the Church must live in the world after his visible departure, through union with him in suffering, prayer in his Name, and joy rooted in the Resurrection. This text underpins Catholic confidence in the efficacy of prayer, the sacraments and the indwelling of the Paraclete, especially amid persecution and dereliction.
In Part I, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How Christ prepares the Apostles by setting forth the greatest mysteries before his Passion—union with himself, persecution, and the promise of the Paraclete.
That Christ chooses only to reveal what is most vital, entrusting later developments to the Holy Ghost and the Church’s unfolding life.
Why Christ's restraint in revelation confirms both his foresight of the Church’s future and the sufficiency of his words for building her doctrine.
He shows us that divine wisdom reveals truth in measure, never failing in what is necessary, never exceeding what is fitting.
Parting Words
Passiontide, Part III, Chapter VI
Chapter VI
St. John xvi. 16-33, Story of the Gospels, § 156
Burns and Oates, London, 1886
Our Lord taking leave
The last words of our Lord, on which we have been commenting, seem to have been the conclusion of that part of His discourse in which He dealt with certain great subjects which it was important that He should Himself put before His Apostles before proceeding to His Passion.
After the giving to them the priceless boon of the Blessed Sacrament, He had most naturally insisted on the all important matter of union with Himself, and had gone on to speak to them of that doctrine of Unity in His Body, the Church, which flowed from the union with Himself, that abiding in Him of which He had almost spoken as if, that one thing being secured, the perfect triumph of His scheme for the redemption of the world would be completed.
He had spoken in the tenderest manner of the persecution which they were to suffer after His own example from the world, which might perhaps surprise them or even scandalize them, and against which they might require fortifying and comforting by the knowledge that it was in the nature of things, the world being what it is, as well as a mark to them of their resemblance to Himself, which would be in many ways dear to their hearts.
He had gone on to tell them of the Mission of the Paraclete and the great work which He was to do for the glorification of His own Name and the advancement of His Kingdom. He had spoken, moreover, of the great office of the Paraclete in the confutation and exposure of the wicked and lying world, and of the witness which they were on their own part to bear to their Master. The full glories which were to be the fruit of the presence of the Paraclete were as yet kept back. But He said enough to give them an idea of His dignity and greatness, which were to be more fully made known after the Day of Pentecost.
Reasons for omission
There is, however, one remark which may fairly be made with regard to what may seem to us omissions of obvious topics, which we are naturally inclined to wonder at in discourses or conversations of our Lord like that on which we are now engaged.
It cannot be doubted that our Lord had, at the time at which He spoke, present to His mind the fact that after a certain fixed time in the life of the Church the Gospels were to be written, and various documents were to be committed to writing, by means of which many of His own words and actions were to be preserved for future times for the benefit of the faithful.
Records of this kind were to be the natural and almost spontaneous results of the system which He adopted of oral teaching, and would have their value and necessity in proportion to the importance of the teaching thus communicated and the estimation in which that teaching was held by those who heard it.
But there are no traces of the anticipation beforehand of the formation of these treasuries of the Christian body, or of anything being directly said or omitted, because they were in time to come into being. If we consider the few immensely precious words which our Lord uttered, for instance, on this evening, concerning some of the most vitally important of the comparatively new gifts which He was to leave behind Him for the support and consolation of the faithful, we are struck with the manner in which He has confined Himself to the laying down clearly the matters of doctrine which seem most vitally important, so that the Church has not been left without words of His own on which her future edifice of authoritative teaching may be reared.
His utterances in these chapters concerning the Person of the Holy Ghost are a case in point. They are very few, but they suffice for the foundation of Christian theology.
Some of our Lord’s institutions to be developed at once
It may also be remembered that there was to be in some measure a difference between some of our Lord’s institutions and gifts to the Church and others.
The development of the Christian Hierarchy for the government of the Church all over the world was naturally a matter of time and gradual growth, except as to its essential elements, and the organization of the One body, as St. Paul says, by that which every joint supplieth, must have been likewise a process of time.
But there were certain things in the system which our Lord came to establish which did not wait for a gradual unfolding, and among them we may certainly reckon the operations of the Holy Ghost, by which the Church was filled at once in all the communities where she existed. It would not have suited the manner in which this great gift had been announced if there had been any delay in making the effects of the presence of so mighty an agent known to the world, at least as far as it was in contact with the Church.
Thus we conceive there was nothing gradual about the manifestations of the promised Paraclete when He came, except as far as such reserve was required by the circumstances of the Christian body. Spiritus Domini replevit orbem terrarum, is the language used concerning Him by Sacred Scripture. In the same way we suppose it likely that the great gift of the Blessed Sacrament was at once universally frequented among Christians, and we are supported in this opinion by the language of the Acts.
Others more gradually
On the other hand, there must have been many points as to which doctrine and practice certainly unfolded themselves much more gradually.
And there is less to surprise us in the fact that there is a comparative silence in the Gospels themselves which record only our Lord’s promises and prophecies about these great and Divine gifts, than about certain other matters that were to become the heritage of the Christian people, but which were not communicated to them so instantaneously and unreservedly almost as soon as the Holy Ghost was given on the Day of Pentecost.
Our Lord may have seen less need to give long explanations about the coming of the Paraclete and all His gifts and fruits, when within so short a space of time the whole country was to be filled with them. When He told the Apostles that they were to be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days before the prediction was to be fulfilled, it would have been out of place to describe the tongues of fire or other particulars of Pentecost, or to have the prediction recorded in details and circumstances in any Gospel.
But it is time to return to this last conversation of our Lord with His beloved Apostles.
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Parting Words
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