OMELIE / Omelie EN

20 mag 2018

20/05/2018  Pentecost - B 

20/05/2018  Pentecost - B 

Reading 1, Acts 2,1-11 * Psalm 103 * Reading 2, Galatians 5,16-25 * Gospel, John 15,26-27; 16,12-15

Today the promise that Jesus in many occasions has given to His own is fulfilled. He had reassured them that he would have sent the Spirit from the Father, the Spirit that would have made a true change in their life and that would have supported them in their mission. During the last supper, in particular, as John reports, the Lord more than once has spoken about the Holy Spirit and He has called It in different ways: Counselor, Pleader, Spirit of Truth, His witness!

Jesus knew that without It His disciples would not have been able to keep living as disciples and they would not have borne witness to His salvation.

The Paraclete will come, the Spirit of Truth: It, through them, will be witness of Him, that is to say It will give proof that Jesus is truly what His name refers to, the savior of men! This Spirit will give to them the ability to understand and accept not only the difficult teaching of the love that washes the feet of the brothers and let them wash its, but also the one, almost incomprehensible, of the love that gives up its life in accepting the cross. The same Spirit will transfer to Jesus’ disciples what He received from the Father, in this way they will be able to carry on His work among men. It will also be the “Paraclete”, because it will assist them in every circumstance, when they will be accused, when they will be tempted both by their laziness and by the mockery or the violence of individuals or of the environment they are in! they will be protected internally by It and they will not fall in the sin of abandoning the faith or having their love diminished.

The Spirit will guide towards integrity in the truth, that truth that men cannot see, because it is close to God! It itself is Spirit of Truth: It makes whoever receives It able to understand the truth, the real truth, so they will see things, situations and events in the same way as God does, with eyes enlightened by the Father’s love! It is Spirit of truth also because It makes the disciple’s life “truth”, that is to say It makes the disciple spread the simple and strong love, true and tender, real and sweet, of God the Father and of His Son Jesus!

Today’s feast is a solemn and great one. We are celebrating the Holy Spirit descending on the very first community of disciples, which – in that way – has become Church, body of Christ, people guided by the fire of the love and by the light of the divine mysteries, and able to bravely share them with all the peoples. This is the feast that completes or takes the place of the one that the Hebrews celebrate for receiving the Law on the mount Sinai, the feast of the Fiftieth day after Easter. Now the Church is guided by an interior and holy law, whose authority surpasses that of the precepts given by Moses! Those were preparation and prophecy of the new Law, the one that God’s spirit writes in the hearts. This Law does not require as much as to avoid evil, but to perform the works of the love of the Living God! The new Law, if put into practice, makes men similar to God, makes them able to live communion, fraternity, joyous and truly new life!

In the letter to the Galatians, Saint Paul stops to describe the change that the Spirit operates in the life of the man that receives It. First of all, he lists the situations in which those who keep living in a selfish and self-centered way find themselves, then, in just nine words, he describes the work of the Holy Spirit! Those who let God’s Spirit work in them, bear this fruit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control”!

Our desire, today, is indeed to be able to make the reality described by these words shine, like the Mother of God made it shine in her life! Then we will be inside God’s Kingdom, and we will be a trustworthy sign also for those who do not believe.

Let us pray then with joyful faith:

Come, O Holy Spirit, come! From Your bright and blissful Home Rays of healing light impart.

O most blessed Light divine, Let Your radiance in us shine, And our inmost being fill.

Bend the stubborn heart and will, Melt the frozen, warm the chill, Guide the steps that go astray.

On the faithful who in You, Trust with childlike piety, Deign Your sevenfold gift to send.