VATICAN (CNS): The Holy Spirit’s gift of comfort and solace is meant to unite all men and women and not take sides with any ideology, Pope Francis said on Pentecost on May 23.
With Covid-19 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic restrictions slowly easing in Rome and across Italy, the Sunday Mass was celebrated in St. Peter’s Basilica with an estimated 1,000 people, wearing masks and socially distanced, in attendance
The pope said those who listen to the Holy Spirit are not “concerned with conservatives and progressives, traditionalists and innovators, right and left,” adding that if adherence to an ideology becomes “our criteria, then the Church has forgotten the Spirit.”
Those who give in to the temptation to fiercely “defend our ideas, believing them to be good for everybody and agreeing only with those who think as we do,” adhere to a faith created in their own image and “not what the Spirit wants,” he said.
“We might think that what unite us are our beliefs and our morality. But there is much more: Our principle of unity is the Holy Spirit. He reminds us that, first of all, we are God’s beloved children. The Spirit comes to us, in our differences and difficulties, to tell us that we have one Lord—Jesus—and one Father, and that for this reason we are brothers and sisters,” he said.
‘The Spirit comes to us, in our differences and difficulties, to tell us that we have one Lord—Jesus—and one Father, and that for this reason we are brothers and sisters’
Pope Francis
The Holy Spirit “impels us to unity, to harmony, to the harmony of diversity. He makes us see ourselves as parts of the same body, brothers and sisters of one another,” the pope said, exhorting, “Let us look to the whole! The enemy wants diversity to become opposition and so he makes them become ideologies. Say no to ideologies, yes to the whole.”
The pope explained, “The world sees us only as on the right or left; the Spirit sees us as sons and daughters of the Father and brothers and sisters of Jesus. The world sees conservatives and progressives; the Spirit sees children of God. A worldly gaze sees structures to be made more efficient; a spiritual gaze sees brothers and sisters pleading for mercy.”
Pope Francis said the secret to unity is that it is a gift of the Holy Spirit and that it is important to understand that God “acts not by taking away, but by giving.”
He reflected, “If we have in mind a God who takes away and imposes himself, we, too, will want to take away and impose ourselves: occupying spaces, demanding recognition, seeking power.”
However, “if we have in our hearts a God who is gift, everything changes. If we realise that what we are is his gift, free and unmerited, then we, too, will want to make our lives a gift,” he said.
‘When someone thinks this way,’ the pope said, ‘the one thing that certainly does not return is hope. We are experiencing a famine of hope, and we need to appreciate the gift of life, the gift that each of us is. We need the Holy Spirit, the gift of God who heals us of narcissism, victimhood and pessimism’
Pope Francis
Reflecting on Pentecost, Pope Francis said the word “Paraclete” not describes the Holy Spirit as an “advocate” but also as a “comforter,” especially in “times of difficulty like those we are presently experiencing due to the pandemic.”
The pope explained that the comforts of the world are like a pain reliever that offers only temporary relief but does not “cure the illness we carry deep within.”
He said, “Only someone who makes us feel loved for who we are can give peace to our hearts. The Holy Spirit, the love of God, does precisely that. He is the very love of God, who does not abandon us, for being present to those who are alone is itself a source of comfort.”
In turn, Christians are called to “embody the comfort he brings” and to be near to others “not with trite words, but with prayer and closeness,” he said.
The Holy Spirit, he added, is saying that today is a “time for comforting” and more joyfully proclaiming the gospel rather than “combatting paganism” or “lamenting the drama of secularisation.”
The pope said, “It is the time for pouring out love upon the world, yet not embracing worldliness. It is more the time for testifying to mercy, than for inculcating rules and regulations. It is the time of the Paraclete. It is the time of freedom of heart, in the Paraclete.”
The pope also warned Christians of the “three enemies” of God’s gift that lurk “at the door of our hearts” and impede people from giving themselves to others.
The first enemy, narcissism, “is the tendency to think only of our own needs, to be indifferent to those of others and not to admit our own frailties and mistakes.” However, victimhood, the second enemy, is “equally dangerous,” because people close their hearts and are concerned only with their own sufferings.
If the Church only concerns itself with ‘our own projects, our structures, our plans for reform’ then it will ‘bear no fruit,’ Pope Francis said
Pessimism is the final enemy, and it sees everything in “the worst light” and repeatedly says that nothing will return as before.
“When someone thinks this way,” the pope said, “the one thing that certainly does not return is hope. We are experiencing a famine of hope, and we need to appreciate the gift of life, the gift that each of us is. We need the Holy Spirit, the gift of God who heals us of narcissism, victimhood and pessimism.”
Continuing his homily, Pope Francis said that awhile the spirit of the Evil One deceives all to “yield to the allure and promptings of vice,” the Holy Spirit is “the spirit of truth” that brings “thoughts and feelings” without forcing or imposing.
The Holy Spirit affirms “the primacy of today,” which means living “in the present” and not being “paralysed by rancor or memories of the past” nor fearful of the future, the pope said.
He continued saying that the Holy Spirit does not “mold isolated individuals” but rather “shapes us into a Church in the wide variety of our charisms, into a unity that is never uniformity.”
The apostles, the pope explained, had “contrary political ideas, different visions of the world,” but upon receiving the Spirit, “learned to give primacy not to their human viewpoints but to the ‘whole’ that is God’s plan.”
Lastly, the Holy Spirit affirms “the primacy of grace” and calls on all Christians to “put God before yourself,” the pope said.
If the Church only concerns itself with “our own projects, our structures, our plans for reform” then it will “bear no fruit,” Pope Francis said.
“The Church is human, but it is not merely a human organisation, it is the temple of the Holy Spirit,” the pope said.
“Jesus brought the fire of the Spirit to the earth, and the Church is reformed by the anointing of grace, the gratuity of the anointing of grace, the power of prayer, the joy of mission and the disarming beauty of poverty. Let us put God in first place!” he concluded.
