OMELIE / Omelie EN

31 mag 2020

31/05/2020 -  Pentecost Sunday - A 

31/05/2020 -  Pentecost Sunday - A 

Reading 1 ACTS 2,1-11 * Psalm 103 * Reading 2 1COR 12,3b-7.12-13 * Sequence - Gospel  JN 20,19-23

We are here to give thanks to the Father. The thanksgiving to God from a sincere heart and from a congregation gathered is the result of the presence of the Holy Spirit. In fact, it is the Holy Spirit giving us light in order to know, appreciate and love the mysteries of the Father’s love. It is the Holy Spirit who makes us acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God and our Saviour. Enlightened by the Spirit and united by the strength of its feeling of communion, we participate in the thanksgiving of the Preface, the solemn prayer that opens the Eucharistic liturgy. The reasons for our thanksgiving are infinite, because infinite are the events and the ways with which the Father is showing us and communicating to us His love, infinite are the mysteries of His goodness. Today too the Preface begins like this:  “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks…”. Giving thanks is truly a source of salvation! When you find yourself tired and hopeless, let us give thanks, and you will heal. Are you disappointed and disheartened? Let us give thanks, and you will rise again. Do you suffer from solitude or other problems, temptations and sufferings? In every situation giving thanks gives the Holy Spirit the possibility to intervene. Reasons for giving thanks we can find first of all in Jesus' life: if we do this we find ourselves free from our narcissism and we rise again, and we are prepared to join “the heavenly Powers, with the angelic hosts, sing together the unending hymn of your glory: Holy, Holy, Holy!”

Today we give thanks because, thanks to Jesus, the Holy Spirit has filled and overshadowed the whole Church. The Father has fulfilled the promise made by the Son to His apostles and disciples, and has sent on them and inside them His Spirit, His breath of life, His waft, His strength of love: the Spirit revealing the mysteries of God and Spirit unifying the voices of all people in a single praise. These are exactly the fruit of the Spirit referred to by today’s readings.

The story of the Acts is introducing a crowd of peoples, languages and different cultures receiving the same announcement and the same joy, the announcement of the death and resurrection of Jesus and of His love that forgives. Saint Paul’s words to the Corinthians are reassuring us that the Holy Spirit enriches the Church with its gifts, charismas and different ministries, to make of it a body united by the obedience to the commandment of reciprocal love. We are all different, and every one of us has received different skills and duties, so to be useful for the others and to be able to welcome their services humbly: in this way we are helped live the unity.

Every time we celebrate the Eucharist we invoke the Holy Spirit both on the gifts of the bread and wine, so they may become the body and the blood of the Lord, and on those who are feeding on them, so they may become in Him a single heart and a single soul! This prayer remains carved in the heart and we address it daily to the Father so all His children will not let themselves be overcome by temptation. The strongest temptation, most unceasing and devastating is really the one of discord, which brings division. The devil in fact, as God's enemy and man's, wants to divide us in our most inner part, wants to destroy us, to strip our desires of goodness from our actions, wants to break the unity of our families, wants to create misunderstandings and selfishness, jealousy and envy, so communities and peoples may use differences to misunderstand one another and destroy one another, exactly like Babel (GEN 11,1 and following).

The invocation of the Holy Spirit is therefore continuously present in the Church, and it is used daily by each one of us. When, praying the Our Father, we say “Thy kingdom come”, in fact, we ask the Father for that strength of unity that keeps us united to Jesus and among us, and this strength is the Holy Spirit! When we say “give us this day our daily bread”, we ask for the food necessary so the Church may be nourished and grow as a Church united and meek, as prophetic Church showing the world the lived will of the Father, as Church that reveals and gives to the singles and the society God's love: this bread is the Holy Spirit! And when we say “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive” we recognise we have already received from the Spirit the ability to forgive the brothers, and at the same time humbly we ask the Father that His mercy may change the direction of His judgement, always thanks to His Spirit that we receive from the breathing with which Jesus reaches our face.

Having welcomed Jesus as the Lord is reassuring us that the Spirit is already resting on us, and our hearts are already fired up by Him, however we keep saying: Come, Holy Spirit, come! And from your celestial home shed a ray of light divine! He needs to continue His work in the Church and in the world, and we put ourselves at His service: Bend the stubborn heart and will; melt the frozen, warm the chill; guide the steps that go astray. Let us start your work with me, who need correction and help: come!