While celebrating Mass in St. Peter’s Square in front of over 200,000 people yesterday, the Pope reflected on how change makes us fearful, but if we let the Holy Spirit be the “soul and guide” of our lives, we will be much more open to “God’s surprises” in life.
“Newness always makes us a bit fearful, because we feel more secure if we have everything under control, if we are the ones who build, program and plan our lives,” the pope said on the Solemnity of Pentecost.
“This is also the case when it comes to God. … It is hard to abandon ourselves to him with complete trust, allowing the Holy Spirit to be the soul and guide of our lives … We fear that God may force us to strike out on new paths and leave behind our all too narrow, closed and selfish horizons in order to become open to his own.”
But throughout the history of salvation, whenever God reveals himself, He always brings newness—and demands our complete trust.
“Noah, mocked by all, builds an ark and is saved; Abram leaves his land with only a promise in hand; Moses stands up to the might of Pharaoh and leads his people to freedom; the apostles, huddled fearfully in the Upper Room, go forth with courage to proclaim the Gospel.”
But this kind of newness isn’t just for novelty’s sake, for something to relieve our boredom, he said.
“The newness which God brings into our life is something that actually brings fulfillment, that gives true joy, true serenity, because God loves us and desires only our good.”
All of us need to ask ourselves, “Are we open to ‘God’s surprises’? Or are we closed and fearful before the newness of the Holy Spirit? Do we have the courage to strike out along the new paths which God’s newness sets before us, or do we resist, barricaded in transient structures which have lost their capacity for openness to what is new?”
Because of the diversity of His charisms and gifts, the Holy Spirit would appear to create disorder in the Church, the pope continued, but His work always leads back to unity.
“Only the Spirit can awaken diversity, plurality, and multiplicity, while at the same time building unity. Here too, when we are the ones who try to create diversity and close ourselves up in what makes us different and other, we bring division. When we are the ones who want to build unity in accordance with our human plans, we end up creating uniformity, standardization. But if instead we let ourselves be guided by the Spirit, richness, variety and diversity never become a source of conflict, because he impels us to experience variety within the communion of the Church.”
Having a sense of the Church is something fundamental for every Christian, every community, and every movement in the Church, he said.
“It is the Church which brings Christ to me, and me to Christ; parallel journeys are very dangerous! When we venture beyond the Church’s teaching and community … and do not remain in them, we are not one with the God of Jesus Christ.”
The Pope went on to reflect about the early theologian’s concept of the Holy Spirit as being a kind of sailboat in which the Spirit was the wind that filled the sails and drove it forward and the gusts were the gifts He brought.
“Lacking his impulse and his grace, we do not go forward,” the Pope said.
“It is the Paraclete, the ‘Comforter’, who grants us the courage to take to the streets of the world, bringing the Gospel! The Holy Spirit makes us look to the horizon and urges us toward the very outskirts of existence in order to proclaim life in Jesus Christ.”
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