Spirit of truth; sorrow to joy; high-priestly prayer (John 16:12–17:3)

That is: he speaks in agreement with me; for the Spirit is not lacking; being self-subsistent as consubstantial with Father and Son he knows all things and has power of himself to act.

When the Spirit teaches you, then you will be able to leave the legal types and make the worship “in spirit and truth” (John 4:23–24). The Spirit is not greater than the Son, he says. Therefore he will speak nothing from himself, but what he hears; for what I say, that one also will say. The Spirit will teach human beings the things of the Son’s Godhead and glory and of equality with the Father. He does not fail to speak from weakness; he said this because of the exact harmony of the Trinity.

As the Son naturally has the Father’s things through the consubstantial, he said that the Spirit’s own things are also his, as the things of the Trinity are common.

So as not to grieve the disciples, he also did not say “I die,” but “you do not see me.”

Under grief they did not understand, and that he was departing they knew, but how he would come they did not know; for they were ignorant of the resurrection before the outcome.

Since being deeply grieved they did not want to hear about his death, wanting to fix this doctrine in them he said “you will weep”; after the grief there will be joy.

The reward of your grief will be joy, as also for the woman in labor the joy from childbirth after the grief. Since when he died it appeared to them to pass from grief into joy, he used the example of the woman giving birth.

Since you will be persuaded that as God I rose and die no longer, even if with the flesh I go up into heaven.

He means the time of the resurrection.

For as in proverbs Christ speaks these things as one going on to say; for it cannot be understood according to the letter. And that one asks and receives who asks what is profitable for bettering souls. He calls proverb the unclear and veiled word. Because of their infancy he speaks in a shaded way. But when you advance, then I unveil to you the Father’s glory. After the resurrection I will speak clearly to you the things about the Father. When you receive the Spirit, then you will receive clear knowledge about Son and Father.

He can as God give, yet as already saying “I ask” he stayed with the word by economy as man.

From the essence, he says, I came out from the Father, being indivisibly in the Father and having the Father self-subsistently in myself. Neither when he became man, left behind by the Father, is he said to have come into the world, nor when he was taken up with the flesh was he left behind by the world; for he is God filling all things.

The “now you believe” he says more humanly; for insofar as I am God, I am in God and Father naturally and without interval. He said this by condescension, since the disciples wanted to hear this.

Christ appeared better and more powerful than every worldly sin and also gives the faithful to conquer. Or that Christ, having come to be from us insofar as man, appeared better than death and corruption and the grace passes over to us. And so we ought to take courage that we will receive, since as man he conquered and we seem in him to have conquered; for if as God he conquered, it is nothing toward us.

He calls hour the fitting time of the passion, at which he judged to suffer—as also he said about the wine—not the hypostasis-less fate.

Through the form of prayer he trains us in trials to pray and take refuge in God.

So that the hearers may not take offense, by economy he says “what you have given me.”

It must be noted that right faith is the true life that grants its own goods to those who believe. He says he was sent not as from necessity serving the Father’s will