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Pope Benedict XVI- Homilies |
"The
Holy Spirit Overcomes Fear"
Homily on the Solemnity of Pentecost
H.H. Benedict XVI
St. Peter's Basilica
May 31, 2009
Dear Brothers and Sisters!
Every time that we celebrate the Eucharist we experience in faith
the mystery that is accomplished on the altar, that is, we
participate in the supreme act of love that Christ realized with his
death and resurrection. The one center of the liturgy and of
Christian life -- the paschal mystery -- then assumes specific
"forms," with different meanings and particular gifts of grace, in
the different solemnities and feasts. Among all the solemnities,
Pentecost is distinguished by its importance, because in it that
which Jesus himself proclaimed as being the purpose of his whole
earthly mission is accomplished. In fact, while he was going up to
Jerusalem, he declared to his disciples: "I have come to cast fire
upon the earth, and how I wish for it to be kindled!" (Luke 12:49).
These words find their most obvious realization 50 days after the
resurrection, in Pentecost, the ancient Jewish feast that, in the
Church, has become the feast of the Holy Spirit par excellence:
"There appeared to them parted tongues as of fire ... and all were
filled with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:3-4). The Holy Spirit, the true
fire, was brought to earth by Christ. He did not steal it from the
gods -- as Prometheus did according to the Greek myth -- but he
became the mediator of the "gift of God," obtaining it for us with
the greatest act of love in history: his death on the cross.
God wants to continue to give this "fire" to every human generation,
and naturally he is free to do this how and when he wants. He is
spirit, and the spirit "blows where he wills" (cf. John 3:8).
However, there is an "ordinary way" that God himself has chosen for
"casting fire upon the earth": Jesus is this way, the incarnate only
begotten Son of God, dead and risen. For his part, Jesus constituted
the Church as his mystical body, so that it prolongs his mission in
history. "Receive the Holy Spirit" -- the Lord says to the Apostles
on the evening of his resurrection, accompanying those words with an
expressive gesture: he "breathed" upon them (cf. John 20:22). In
this way he showed them that he was transmitting his Spirit to them,
the Spirit of the Father and the Son.
Now, dear brothers and sisters, in today's solemnity Scripture tells
us how the community must be, how we must be to receive the Holy
Spirit. In his account of Pentecost the sacred author says that the
disciples "were together in the same place." This "place" is the
Cenacle, the "upper room," where Jesus held the Last Supper with his
disciples, where he appeared to them after his resurrection; that
room that had become the "seat," so to speak, of the nascent Church
(cf. Acts 1:13). Nevertheless, the intention in the Acts of the
Apostles is more to indicate the interior attitude of the disciples
than to insist on a physical place: "They all persevered in concord
and prayer" (Acts 1:14). So, the concord of the disciples is the
condition for the coming of the Holy Spirit; and prayer is the
presupposition of concord.
This is also true for the Church today, dear brothers and sisters.
It is true for us who are gathered together here. If we do not want
Pentecost to be reduced to a mere ritual or to a suggestive
commemoration, but that it be a real event of salvation, through a
humble and silent listening to God's Word we must predispose
ourselves to God's gift in religious openness. So that Pentecost
renew itself in our time, perhaps there is need -- without taking
anything away from God's freedom [to do as he pleases] -- for the
Church to be less "preoccupied" with activities and more dedicated
to prayer. Mary Most Holy, the Mother of the Church and Bride of the
Holy Spirit, teaches us this. This year Pentecost occurs on the last
day of May, when the Feast of the Visitation is customarily
celebrated. This event was also a little "Pentecost," bringing forth
joy and praise from the hearts of Elizabeth and Mary -- the one
barren and the other a virgin -- who both became mothers by an
extraordinary divine intervention (cf. Luke 1:41-45).
The music and singing that is accompanying our liturgy, also help us
to united in prayer, and in this regard I express a lively
recognition of the choir of the Cologne cathedral and the Cologne
Chamber Orchestra. Joseph Haydn's "Harmoniemesse," the last of the
Masses composed by this great musician, and a sublime symphony for
the glory of God, was chosen for today's Mass. The Haydn Mass was a
fitting choice given that it is the bicentennial of the composer's
death. I address a cordial greeting to all those who have come for
this.
To indicate the Holy Spirit, the account in the Acts of the Apostles
uses two great images, the image of the tempest and the image of
fire. Clearly, St. Luke had in mind the theophany of Sinai,
recounted in Exodus (19:16-19) and Deuteronomy (4:10-12:36). In the
ancient world the tempest was seen as a sign of divine power, in
whose presence man felt subjugated and terrified. But I would like
to highlight another aspect: the tempest is described as a "strong
driving wind," and this brings to mind the air that distinguishes
our planet from others and permits us to live on it. What air is for
biological life, the Holy Spirit is for the spiritual life; and as
there is air pollution, that poisons the environment and living
things, there is also pollution of the heart and the spirit, that
mortifies and poisons spiritual existence. In the same way that we
should not be complacent about the poisons in the air -- and for
this reason ecological efforts are a priority today -- we should
also not be complacent about that which corrupts the spirit. But
instead it seems that our minds and hearts are menaced by many
pollutants that circulate in society today -- the images, for
example, that make pleasure a spectacle, violence that degrades men
and women -- and people seem to habituate themselves to this without
any problem. It is said that this is freedom but it is just a
failure to recognize all that which pollutes, poisons the soul,
above all of the new generations, and ends up limiting freedom
itself. The metaphor of the strong driving wind of Pentecost makes
one think of how precious it is to breathe clean air, be it physical
air without lungs, or spiritual air -- the healthy air of the spirit
that is love -- with our heart.
Fire is the other image of the Holy Spirit that we find in the Acts
of the Apostles. I compared Jesus with the mythological figure of
Prometheus at the beginning of the homily. The figure of Prometheus
suggests a characteristic aspect of modern man. Taking control of
the energies of the cosmos -- "fire" -- today human beings seem to
claim themselves as gods and want to transform the world excluding,
putting aside or simply rejecting the Creator of the universe. Man
no longer wants to be the image of God but the image of himself; he
declares himself autonomous, free, adult. Obviously that reveals an
inauthentic relationship with God, the consequence of a false image
that has been constructed of him, like the prodigal son in the
Gospel parable who thought that he could find himself by distancing
himself from the house of his father. In the hands of man in this
condition, "fire" and its enormous possibilities become dangerous:
they can destroy life and humanity itself, as history unfortunately
shows. The tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in which atomic
energy, used as a weapon, ended up bringing death in unheard of
proportions, remain a perennial warning.
We could of course find many examples, less grave and yet just as
symptomatic, in the reality of everyday life. Sacred Scripture
reveals that the energy that has the ability to move the world is
not an anonymous and blind power, but the action of the "spirit of
God that broods over the waters" (Genesis 1:2) at the beginning of
creation. And Jesus Christ "cast upon the earth" not a native power
that was already present but the Holy Spirit, that is, the love of
God, who "renews the face of the earth," purifying it of evil and
liberating it from the dominion of death (cf. Psalm 103 [104]:
29-30). This pure "fire," essential and personal, the fire of love,
descended upon the Apostles, gathered together with Mary in prayer
in the cenacle, to make the Church the extension of Christ's work of
renewal.
Finally, a last thought also taken from the Acts of the Apostles:
the Holy Spirit overcomes fear. We know that the disciples fled to
the cenacle after the Master's arrest and remained there out of fear
of suffering the same fate. After Jesus' resurrection this fear did
not suddenly disappear. But when the Holy Spirit descended upon them
at Pentecost, those men went out without fear and began to proclaim
the good news of Christ crucified and risen. They had no fear,
because they felt that they were in stronger hands. Yes, dear
brothers and sisters, where the Spirit of God enters, he chases out
fear; he makes us know and feel that we are in the hands of an
Omnipotence of love: whatever happens, his infinite love will not
abandon us. The witness of the martyrs, the courage of the
confessors, the intrepid élan of missionaries, the frankness of
preachers, the example of all the saints -- some who were even
adolescents and children -- demonstrate this. It is also
demonstrated by the very existence of the Church, which, despite the
limits and faults of men, continues to sail across the ocean of
history, driven by the breath of God and animated by his purifying
fire. With this faith and this joyous hope we repeat today, through
Mary's intercession: "Send forth your Spirit, O Lord, and renew the
face of the earth!"
[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]
Look
at the One they Pierced!
This page is the work of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and
Mary
