While in college, I worked summers for the adoption agency of the Archdiocese, microfilming and shredding closed case files. Back then, of course, everything surrounding an adoption was confidential and children were never allowed to know the names of their birth parents. One day while shredding, I came across an adoption involving acquaintances of our family. Bound by secrecy, I hung on to the information, which hung onto me like an albatross around my neck. Finally, unable to bear the tension, I told my parents. Their response was, Oh, Peter! Everybody knows that!!”
 
Orphans tug at our heart strings. Charles Dickens made them staples in his cast of characters: David Copperfield, Martin Chuzzlewit, Sydney Carlton in “A Tale of Two Cities,” Nell in the “Old Curiosity Shop,” Esther Summerson of “Bleak House,” Pip in “Great Expectations” and, most famously, Oliver. (Please, Sir Dickens, could we not have some more!) Dickens had an axe to grind against the cruelty and hypocrisy of British labor and poverty laws in his own day. But orphans have also dominated children’s - and even adult - fiction. Cosette in “Les Miserables” served the same consciousness-raising purpose for Victor Hugo as Dickens’ kids did for him. The same is true for Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. More romanticized were Jane Eyre, Heidi, Mogli, Peter Pan, Rapunzel, Snow White, Cinderella and even Clark Kent/Superboy. The comics gave us “Dondi” and, of course, “Little Orphan Annie.”
 
While “Tomorrow” might have been “loved” by Annie for its inevitability of being “only a day away,” the plight of the orphaned in New Testament times was even grimmer than for those living on the mean streets of Dickensian London. There was no brighter tomorrow. Every day was the same harsh reality. There were no orphanages, no kindly shopkeepers or mysterious, wealthy benefactors to rescue them. With no family, they had no status, no home, no identity. When Saint Jerome translated the Greek New Testament into Latin, he simply borrowed the Greek word: “Orphanos.” From Greek and Latin, it comes into English unchanged. “I will not leave you orphans; I will come back to you.” That’s what Jesus tells His disciples in today’s Gospel. Some translations try to soften it. But that’s what Jesus said; and that’s what John wrote.
 
The word captures the grim reality of their lives in the aftermath of Good Friday. All the Gospels depict them as “dropping everything” to follow Jesus. It may not have been quite that literal. Most of them made their living from the bounty of the Sea of Galilee - sometimes called the Lake of Gennesaret. Jesus’ “home base” was the City of Capernaum, on the lakeshore. So they often were at home, perhaps with family or plying their trades. However, Jesus was the center of their lives. Without him, their lives would be empty of meaning.
 
And so it was. The resurrection accounts show a devastated community, turned so inward in shock, grief and shame, that they were slow to comprehend the evidence of their eyes and ears at Jesus’ return. Hardly had they adjusted to the unbelievable joy of this turn of events when - poof! - He was gone again. In the Gospel of Matthew and John, some days after His resurrection, Jesus meets his friends in Galilee. John’s stories are intimate; Matthew’s solemn. Saint Luke tells two contradictory tales. In his Gospel, Jesus departs on the night of the resurrection. In the Acts of the Apostles, the same Saint Luke has Jesus “hang around vaguely” for forty days. We have no time to talk about the purpose of those two farewells here, although there certainly is one. The point is that - on the level of sheer human emotion - the disciples experienced a one-two punch of abandonment, very much akin to being orphaned.
 
Christ’s solution? “I will send you another paraclethos.” I wrote out the Greek word because different bibles use different English at this spot. Catholics like the transliterated “Paraclete” best - although kids often hear it as parakeet. The Greek word comes from the language of the courts. It referred to someone called to defend an accused person. We would use two analogous terms today - defense counsel and character witness. Our lectionary (the New American Bible, revised edition) uses the word “Advocate.” That is a satisfactory translation of both the Greek, para-kalein” and the Latin “ad vocare,” both of which mean “to call [someone] to the side of.” It doesn’t sound too much like it would ease the heartache and disorientation caused by Jesus death, a wound reopened by His ascension.
 
The first thing to notice is the little adjective “another.” If the Paraclete Jesus will send - whom He names “the Holy Spirit - is “another,” then who was the first? Jesus Himself, obviously. In John’s Gospel, the writer takes pains to show how Jesus protects, shields and bolsters His disciples. In doing so, John echoes similar situations in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Sometimes, Jesus’ rescue was direct: saving Peter from drowning in the storm-tossed waves on the Sea of Galilee; demanding of the arresting officers that, “If I am the one you seek, let these men (i.e., the disciples) go!” Other times, Jesus taught them things they would need to know in order to survive and thrive as a community without Him: “Do this, whenever you do it, in memory of Me”; “Love one another as I have loved you”; “Whoever would be your leader must be your servant.”
 
The new Paraclete will “be with you always,” calling to mind all that Jesus had taught. That teaching, moreover, was not a list of propositions. It was a blueprint for living. It involved action; not contemplation.
 
A similar situation confronts us when we look at today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles. As often happens, for the sake of brevity and clarity, those who arranged the Lectionary have left out the story’s link to the previous episode. Last week we watched the Apostles try to solve the problem of prejudice in the Jerusalem church community between Hebrew and Greek-speaking people. Their solution was to choose seven men - their names give them away as Greek speaking - to minister to the charitable demands of the people.
 
But one, Stephen, immediately becomes an outspoken preacher and, for his efforts, is stoned to death by a Jewish mob. The murder triggers wholesale persecutions of the Christian community in and around the City of Jerusalem where, up until that moment, the infant Church was headquartered. Everyone runs for cover - it’s another experience of being orphaned. That’s where today’s reading begins. Philip, another of the seven chosen men, flees to Samaria - a place abhorrent to observant Jews. He begins to tell the story of Jesus and the Samaritans begin to embrace the Faith. Once more, decisive action has helped to heal the pain of loss.
 
The same dynamic lies behind the passage from the First Letter of Peter in today’s second reading. The writer talks about defending the faith, which might lead us to believe that this is missionary instruction - Christianity on the offensive. But the writer has in mind either contemporary or future situations in which Christians once again are the hounded and hunted minority. Against this backdrop, Saint Peter counsels politeness, reverence and gentleness in defending oneself against serious, perhaps capital, accusations. (“Reverence” here can only mean respect for Roman government officials, since there were no religious buildings or objects to which reverence, in the modern sense of the word, could be paid.) Once again,  action becomes the antidote to the terror of loss or abandonment.
 
There’s no doubt that Christians at this moment - and Catholics more than most because of the centrality of Eucharist to our whole experience of belief - feel abandoned. We’re orphans, hoping for “tomorrow.”
 
Yet Jesus promised, “I will NOT leave you orphans.” He begins by saying something that does not sound very consoling: “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments!” Yes, but remember that, in John’s Gospel, Jesus has only one commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you!” His love, as we know, was protective, instructive and intimate. Such actions, even in the face of loss, will lead to Jesus' asking the Father to send that “other” Protector, Consoler, Advocate, the Holy Spirit. He is the “Spirit of Truth,” in the sense of recalling all of Jesus’ “truth.” Jesus’ truth was not a set of propositions but a call to action. So the passage closes by saying that “the one who loves Me will keep My commandments and My Father will love him ....” In the end, the void is filled not only by the Paraclete, but by the dwelling with us of both Father and Son.
 
Not receiving Jesus in Holy Communion does not stop us from BEING Jesus to one another. We can try our best to love as Jesus loved. Saint Peter said that requires responding with gentleness and reverence to provoking situations. Our current situation is nothing if not provoking. In political life, in the public arena, in Church circles, people tend to respond to provocation with vituperation and galling irreverence. We oppose others’ by dehumanizing or even demonizing them. “It is better,” says Saint Peter, if you’re gonna suffer anyway, “to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.”
 
“The sun will come out tomorrow!” So will The Son. Betcha bottom dollar!!