veni, creator
spiritus
Meeting and Prayer
Vigil with Ecclesial Movements and New Communities
Vigil of the Solemnity of Pentecost
H.H. Benedict XVI
June 3, 2006
Dear Brothers
and Sisters,
You have come
to St Peter's Square this evening in really large numbers to
take part in the Pentecost Vigil. I warmly thank you. You
belong to different peoples and cultures and represent here
all the members of the Ecclesial Movements and New
Communities, spiritually gathered round the Successor of
Peter to proclaim the joy of believing in Jesus Christ and
to renew the commitment to be faithful disciples in our
time.
I thank you
for your participation and address my cordial greeting to
each one of you. My affectionate thoughts go in the first
place to the Cardinals, to my venerable Brothers in the
Episcopate and in the Priesthood and to the men and women
Religious.
I greet those
in charge of your numerous Ecclesial Associations who show
how alive the Holy Spirit's action is among the People of
God. I greet the organizers of this extraordinary event, and
especially those who work at the Pontifical Council for the
Laity with Bishop Josef Clemens, the Secretary, and
Archbishop Stanisław Ryłko, the President, to whom I am also
grateful for his cordial words at the beginning of the
Vespers Liturgy.
A
similar meeting that took place in this same Square on
30 May 1998 with
beloved Pope John Paul II springs to mind. A great
evangelizer of our time, he accompanied and guided you
throughout his Pontificate.
He described your Associations and Communities on many
occasions as "providential", especially because the
Sanctifying Spirit makes use of them to reawaken faith in so
many Christian hearts and to reveal to them the vocation
they have received with Baptism. He also helps them to be
witnesses of hope filled with that fire of love which is
bestowed upon us precisely by the Holy Spirit.
Let us ask ourselves now, at this Pentecost Vigil, who or
what is the Holy Spirit? How can we recognize him? How do we
go to him and how does he come to us? What does he do?
The Church's
great Pentecostal hymn with which we began Vespers: "Veni,
Creator Spiritus... Come, Holy Spirit" gives us a first
answer. Here the hymn refers to the first verses of the
Bible that describe the creation of the universe with
recourse to images.
The Bible
says first of all that the Spirit of God was moving over the
chaos, over the waters of the abyss.
The world in
which we live is the work of the Creator Spirit. Pentecost
is not only the origin of the Church and thus in a special
way her feast; Pentecost is also a feast of creation. The
world does not exist by itself; it is brought into being by
the creative Spirit of God, by the creative Word of God.
For this reason Pentecost also mirrors God's wisdom. In its
breadth and in the omni-comprehensive logic of its laws,
God's wisdom permits us to glimpse something of his Creator
Spirit. It elicits reverential awe.
Those very
people who, as Christians, believe in the Creator Spirit
become aware of the fact that we cannot use and abuse the
world and matter merely as material for our actions and
desires; that we must consider creation a gift that has
not been given to us to be destroyed, but to become God's
garden, hence, a garden for men and women.
In the face
of the many forms of abuse of the earth that we see today,
let us listen, as it were, to the groaning of creation of
which St Paul speaks (Rom 8: 22); let us begin by
understanding the Apostle's words, that creation waits with
impatience for the revelation that we are children of God,
to be set free from bondage and obtain his splendour.
Dear friends,
we want to be these children of God for whom creation is
waiting, and we can become them because the Lord has made us
such in Baptism. Yes, creation and history - they are
waiting for us, for men and women who are truly children of
God and behave as such.
If we look at
history, we see that creation prospered around monasteries,
just as with the reawakening of God's Spirit in human hearts
the brightness of the Creator Spirit has also been restored
to the earth - a splendour that has been clouded and at
times even extinguished by the barbarity of the human mania
for power.
Moreover, the
same thing happened once again around Francis of Assisi - it
has happened everywhere as God's Spirit penetrates souls,
this Spirit whom our hymn describes as light, love and
strength.
Thus, we have
discovered an initial answer to the question as to what the
Holy Spirit is, what he does and how we can recognize him.
He comes to meet us through creation and its beauty.
However, in
the course of human history, a thick layer of dirt has
covered God's good creation, which makes it difficult if not
impossible to perceive in it the Creator's reflection,
although the knowledge of the Creator's existence is
reawakened within us ever anew, as it were, spontaneously,
at the sight of a sunset over the sea, on an excursion to
the mountains or before a flower that has just bloomed.
But the
Creator Spirit comes to our aid. He has entered history and
speaks to us in a new way. In Jesus Christ, God himself was
made man and allowed us, so to speak, to cast a glance at
the intimacy of God himself.
And there we
see something totally unexpected: in God, an "I" and a
"You" exist. The mysterious God is not infinite loneliness,
he is an event of love. If by gazing at creation we think we
can glimpse the Creator Spirit, God himself, rather like
creative mathematics, like a force that shapes the laws of
the world and their order, but then, even, also like beauty
- now we come to realize: the Creator Spirit has a heart.
He is Love.
The Son who
speaks to the Father exists and they are both one in the
Spirit, who constitutes, so to speak, the atmosphere of
giving and loving which makes them one God. This unity of
love which is God, is a unity far more sublime than the
unity of a last indivisible particle could be. The Triune
God himself is the one and only God.
Through Jesus let us as it were cast a glance at God in his
intimacy. John, in his Gospel, expressed it like this: "No
one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of
the Father, he has made him known" (Jn 1: 18).
Yet Jesus did
not only let us see into God's intimacy; with him, God also
emerged, as it were, from his intimacy and came to meet us.
This happened especially in his life, passion, death and
Resurrection; in his words.
Jesus,
however is not content with coming to meet us. He wants
more. He wants unification. This is the meaning of the
images of the banquet and the wedding.
Not only must
we know something about him, but through him we must be
drawn to God. For this reason he had to die and be raised,
since he is now no longer to be found in any specific place,
but his Spirit, the Holy Spirit, emanates from him and
enters our hearts, thereby uniting us with Jesus himself and
with the Father, the Triune God.
Pentecost is
this: Jesus, and through him God himself, actually comes to
us and draws us to himself. "He sends forth the Holy Spirit"
- this is what Scripture says. What effect does this have?
I would like
first of all to pick out two aspects: the Holy Spirit,
through whom God comes to us, brings us life and freedom.
Let us look at both these things a little more closely.
"I came that
they might have life, and have it abundantly", Jesus says in
the Gospel of John (10: 10). Life and freedom: these are
the things for which we all yearn. But what is this - where
and how do we find "life"?
I think that
the vast majority of human beings spontaneously have the
same concept of life as the Prodigal Son of the Gospel. He
had his share of the patrimony given to him and then felt
free; in the end, what he wanted was to live no longer
burdened by the duties of home, but just to live. He wanted
everything that life can offer. He wanted to enjoy it to the
full - living, only living, immersed in life's abundance,
missing none of all the valuable things it can offer.
In the end he
found himself caring for pigs and even envying those animals
- his life had become so empty and so useless. And his
freedom was also proving useless.
When all that people want from life is to take possession of
it, it becomes ever emptier and poorer; it is easy to end up
seeking refuge in drugs, in the great deception. And doubts
surface as to whether, in the end, life is truly a good.
No, we do not
find life in this way. Jesus' words about life in abundance
are found in the Good Shepherd discourse. His words are set
in a double context.
Concerning
the shepherd, Jesus tells us that he lays down his life. "No
one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own
accord" (cf. Jn 10: 18). It is only in giving life that it
is found; life is not found by seeking to possess it. This
is what we must learn from Christ; and the Holy Spirit
teaches us that it is a pure gift, that it is God's gift of
himself. The more one gives one's life for others, for
goodness itself, the more abundantly the river of life
flows.
Secondly, the
Lord tells us that life unfolds in walking with the Shepherd
who is familiar with the pasture - the places where the
sources of life flow.
We find life
in communion with the One who is life in person - in
communion with the living God, a communion into which we are
introduced by the Holy Spirit, who is called in the hymn of
Vespers "fons vivus", a living source.
The pasture
where the sources of life flow is the Word of God as we find
it in Scripture, in the faith of the Church. The pasture is
God himself who we learn to recognize in the communion of
faith through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Dear friends,
the Movements were born precisely of the thirst for true
life; they are Movements for life in every sense.
Where the
true source of life no longer flows, where people only
appropriate life instead of giving it, wherever people are
ready to dispose of unborn life because it seems to take up
room in their own lives, it is there that the life of others
is most at risk.
If we want to
protect life, then we must above all rediscover the source
of life; then life itself must re-emerge in its full beauty
and sublimeness; then we must let ourselves be enlivened by
the Holy Spirit, the creative source of life.
The theme of freedom has just been mentioned. The Prodigal
Son's departure is linked precisely with the themes of life
and freedom. He wanted life and therefore desired to be
totally liberated. Being free, in this perspective, means
being able to do whatever I like, not being bound to accept
any criterion other than and over and above myself. It means
following my own desires and my own will alone.
Those who
live like this very soon clash with others who want to live
the same way. The inevitable consequence of this selfish
concept of freedom is violence and the mutual destruction of
freedom and life.
Sacred
Scripture, on the other hand, connects the concept of
freedom with that of sonship. St Paul says: "You did not
receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but
you have received the spirit of sonship", through which we
cry, ""Abba! Father!'" (Rom 8: 15). What does this mean?
St Paul
presupposes the social system of the ancient world in which
slaves existed. They owned nothing, so they could not be
involved in the proper development of things.
Co-respectively, there were sons who were also heirs and
were therefore concerned with the preservation and good
administration of their property or the preservation of the
State. Since they were free, they also had responsibility.
Leaving aside
the sociological background of that time, the principle
still holds true: freedom and responsibility go hand in
hand. True freedom is demonstrated in responsibility, in a
way of behaving in which one takes upon oneself a shared
responsibility for the world, for oneself and for others.
The son, to whom things belong and who, consequently, does
not let them be destroyed, is free. All the worldly
responsibilities of which we have spoken are nevertheless
partial responsibilities for a specific area, a specific
State, etc.
The Holy
Spirit, on the other hand, makes us sons and daughters of
God. He involves us in the same responsibility that God has
for his world, for the whole of humanity. He teaches us to
look at the world, others and ourselves with God's eyes. We
do not do good as slaves who are not free to act otherwise,
but we do it because we are personally responsible for the
world; because we love truth and goodness, because we love
God himself and therefore, also his creatures. This is the
true freedom to which the Holy Spirit wants to lead us.
The Ecclesial Movements want to and must be schools of
freedom, of this true freedom. Let us learn in them this
true freedom, not the freedom of slaves that aims to cut
itself a slice of the cake that belongs to everyone even if
this means that some do not get any.
We want the
true, great freedom, the freedom of heirs, the freedom of
children of God. In this world, so full of fictitious forms
of freedom that destroy the environment and the human being,
let us learn true freedom by the power of the Holy Spirit;
to build the school of freedom; to show others by our lives
that we are free and how beautiful it is to be truly free
with the true freedom of God's children.
The Holy
Spirit, in giving life and freedom, also gives unity. These
are three gifts that are inseparable from one another. I
have already gone on too long; but let me say a brief word
about unity.
To understand
it, we might find a sentence useful which at first seems
rather to distance us from it. Jesus said to Nicodemus, who
came to him with his questions by night: "The wind blows
where it wills" (Jn 3: 8). But the Spirit's will is not
arbitrary. It is the will of truth and goodness.
Therefore, he does not blow from anywhere, now from one
place and then from another; his breath is not wasted but
brings us together because the truth unites and love unites.
The Holy
Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Spirit who unites
the Father with the Son in Love, which in the one God he
gives and receives. He unites us so closely that St Paul
once said: "You are all one in Jesus Christ" (Gal 3: 28).
With his
breath, the Holy Spirit impels us towards Christ. The Holy
Spirit acts corporeally; he does not only act subjectively
or "spiritually".
The Risen
Christ said to his disciples, who supposed that they were
seeing only a "spirit": "It is I myself; touch me, and see;
for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have"
(cf. Lk 24: 39).
This applies
for the Risen Christ in every period of history. The Risen
Christ is not a ghost, he is not merely a spirit, a thought,
only an idea.
He has
remained incarnate - it is the Risen One who took on our
flesh - and always continues to build his Body, making us
his Body. The Spirit breathes where he wills, and his will
is unity embodied, a unity that encounters the world and
transforms it.
In his Letter
to the Ephesians, St Paul tell us that this Body of Christ,
which is the Church, has joints (cf. 4: 16) and even names
them: they are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and
teachers (cf. 4: 12). In his gifts, the Spirit is
multifaceted - we see it here. If we look at history, if we
look at this assembly here in St Peter's Square, then we
realize that he inspires ever new gifts; we see how
different are the bodies that he creates and how he works
bodily ever anew.
But in him
multiplicity and unity go hand in hand. He breathes where he
wills. He does so unexpectedly, in unexpected places and in
ways previously unheard of. And with what diversity and
corporality does he do so! And it is precisely here that
diversity and unity are inseparable.
He wants your
diversity and he wants you for the one body, in union with
the permanent orders - the joints - of the Church, with the
successors of the Apostles and with the Successor of St
Peter.
He does not lessen our efforts to learn the way of relating
to one another; but he also shows us that he works with a
view to the one body and in the unity of the one body. It is
precisely in this way that unity obtains its strength and
beauty.
May you take
part in the edification of the one body! Pastors must be
careful not to extinguish the Spirit (cf. I Thes 5: 19) and
you will not cease to bring your gifts to the entire
community.
Once again, the Spirit blows where he wills. But his will is
unity. He leads us towards Christ through his Body.
"From
Christ", St Paul tells us, "the whole body, joined and knit
together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each
part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds
itself in love" (Eph 4: 16).
The Holy Spirit desires unity, he desires totality.
Therefore, his presence is finally shown above all in
missionary zeal.
Anyone who
has come across something true, beautiful and good in his
life - the one true treasure, the precious pearl - hastens
to share it everywhere, in the family and at work, in all
the contexts of his life.
He does so
without any fear, because he knows he has received adoption
as a son; without any presumption, for it is all a gift;
without discouragement, for God's Spirit precedes his action
in people's "hearts" and as a seed in the most diverse
cultures and religions.
He does so
without restraint, for he bears a piece of good news which
is for all people and for all the peoples.
Dear friends,
I ask you to collaborate even more, very much more, in the
Pope's universal apostolic ministry, opening doors to
Christ.
This is the
Church's best service for men and women and especially for
the poor, so that the person's life, a fairer order in
society and peaceful coexistence among the nations may find
in Christ the cornerstone on which to build the genuine
civilization, the civilization of love.
The Holy
Spirit gives believers a superior vision of the world, of
life, of history, and makes them custodians of the hope that
never disappoints.
Let us pray
to God the Father, therefore, through Our Lord Jesus Christ,
in the grace of the Holy Spirit, so that the celebration of
the Solemnity of Pentecost may be like an ardent flame and a
blustering wind for Christian life and for the mission of
the whole Church.
I place the
intentions of your Movements and Communities in the heart of
the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, present in the Upper Room
together with the Apostles; may she be the one who implores
God to grant them.
Upon all of
you I invoke an outpouring of the gifts of the Spirit, so
that in our time too, we may have the experience of a
renewed Pentecost. Amen!
