Recently, I was reading to my fifth-grade students a passage from the Gospel of John in which Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit. As I read the words, “the Spirit of truth” (John 14:17), I heard one of my students quietly gasp in awe. I was immediately struck because I, too, have been awed by these words. Something about the fact that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth strikes a chord with us.

In a world that glorifies relativism, it might be surprising to realize how much we long, in the depths of our being, to know the truth. But the truth is not just a concept or an abstract idea; the truth is a Person, the Person of God Himself! Christ told us, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). That is why our hearts naturally pine after the Truth.

This Sunday, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity: one God in three divine Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God the Father sends His Son, who in turn sends us His Spirit. The missions of the Son and the Spirit are inseparable; they always work together for the glory of the Father. Yet we also are sent by the Son; we also have a mission to spread the Gospel, for the glory of God, that is inseparable from that of the Son and the Spirit!

If my mission is one and the same with the Son who said, “I am … the truth,” and with the Spirit of truth, then how can I help but long for the Truth with my whole being? And if I truly desire the truth, then I will want to uproot sin from my life because to sin is to be led astray by a lie, ultimately by a lie that refuses to trust in the all-powerful love of God. It is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love and of truth, who “convicts” us of our sin (John 16:8), not in order to reject us or make us feel guilty, but in order to purify us and draw us to Himself.

“If you remain in My Word, you will truly be My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-31). It is this freedom that we all desire in the depths of our hearts. Truly to be a disciple of Christ brings freedom. But it is not a freedom that comes with ease; it is a freedom that comes through coming face to face with my own sinfulness and through conversion from that sinfulness.  Indeed the freedom Jesus promises to give us is a freedom from sin, but that freedom, that grace and conversion, can only come once I am aware of my own sinfulness and need for God. Let us seek to allow God to bring us and those we love into the freedom of the truth!

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Sr. Mary Martha Becnel is a member of the Ann Arbor-based Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist.