Commentary on the gospel of John, 33

(1) You will remember, my beloved friends, that when I was given the opportunity to preach by the gospel reading yesterday, I spoke to you about the Holy Spirit. The Lord invited those who believed in him to drink of the Spirit; he was addressing men who thought that they had him in their grasp, and were eager to kill him. They were not strong enough, because he himself was unwilling. While he spoke to them in this way, the crowd began to grow restless on his account: some thought that he was the Christ himself, others denied that the Christ was going to rise out of Galilee. The men who were sent to arrest him returned innocent of the crime, and filled with wonder. They also bore witness that his teaching was divine: when the men who had sent them in the first place asked, ‘Why have you not brought him back?’, they replied that they'd never heard a human being speak like that: ‘Because no human being speaks in this way.’