It will not be until the last Sunday in June that we return to green vestments and our regular cycle of readings from St Luke’s Gospel. The Sunday before that we will celebrate Corpus Christi, although the reading is from Luke, but in this article I want to look at the readings for the first two Sundays in June, which are Pentecost and Trinity Sunday.
The Gospels on those days continue to be from St John’s Gospel, and quite naturally both deal with the Holy Spirit. Pentecost is one of the few days in the Church’s year when it is very common to hear a sermon on the First Reading instead of the Gospel, because of course the reading from Acts actually recounts the events that the feast commemorates, but it is certainly worth looking at the Gospel, and what strikes us immediately is St John’s unique use of the word parakletos. This comes into our lectionary translation as “Advocate”, though elsewhere we might see “Comforter” or “Counsellor” or simply “Paraclete”. The Holy Spirit does feature elsewhere in St John’s Gospel, but in Christ’s words to his disciples at the Last Supper, which make up Chapters 14-16, he receives this unusual title several times, and our Pentecost Gospel gives us the first and second occurrences of the word.
