Preparing for Pentecost

General Audience: May 8, 2013

HOLY SPIRIT TEACHES US TO SEE WITH CHRIST'S EYES

Vatican City, 8 May 2013 (VIS) – Eastertide, which culminates with the Solemnity of Pentecost when the Church relives the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, is the perfect time of the Holy Spirit,” the Pope explained to the 75,000 persons present in St. Peter's Square to attend his Wednesday general audience.

After winding through the square in the Popemobile, greeting the various groups of faithful who greeted him as he passed by, the Pope began his catechesis, which was dedicated to the third Person of the Trinity; the Holy Spirit.

“In the Creed,” Francis said, “we profess with faith: 'I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life'. The first truth that we adhere to in the Creed is that the Holy Spirit is 'Kyrios', that is, Lord. This means that He is truly God as are the Father and the Son … but I want to mainly focus on the fact that the Holy Spirit is the inexhaustible source of God's life in us.”

“Men and women of all times and all places desire a full and beautiful life ... a life that is not threatened by death but that can mature and grow to its fullness. The human being is like a traveller who, crossing the deserts of life, is thirsty for living water, gushing and fresh, capable of deeply quenching that profound desire for light, love, beauty, and peace. We all feel that desire! And Jesus gives us this living water. It is the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and whom Jesus pours out into our hearts. 'I have come so that you might have life and have it more abundantly', Jesus says.”

Jesus has come to give us the living water that is the Holy Spirit “so that our lives might be guided by God.” That is why, “when we say that the Christian is a spiritual being we mean precisely this: the Christian is a person who thinks and acts in accordance with God, in accordance with the Holy Spirit. … We know that water is essential to life. Without water we die. It quenches our thirst, washes us, makes the land fertile. … The 'living water', the Holy Spirit, Gift of the Risen One who abides in us, purifies us, enlightens us, renews us, and transforms us so that we might be made to participate in the very life of God who is Love.”

Paul the Apostle, the Bishop of Rome noted, affirms that the Christian life “is enlivened by the Spirit and and by his fruits, which are 'love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control'. … The Spirit himself, together with our spirit, attests that we are God's children. And, if we are children, we are also inheritors, inheritors of God and co-inheritors with Christ if we truly take part in his suffering so that we might also be glorified with him. This is the precious gift that that the Holy Spirit brings to our hearts: the very life of God, the life of true children, a relationship of confidence, freedom, and trust in the love and mercy of God, which also has the effect of a new vision of others, near and far, seen always as brothers and sisters in Jesus to respect and to love. The Holy Spirit teaches us to see with Christ's eyes.”

“That is why,” he concluded, “the living water that is the Holy Spirit quenches the thirst of our lives, because He tells us that we are loved by God as children, that we can love God as his children, and that, with his grace, we can live as children of God, as Jesus does.”