Benedict XVI says that the Holy Spirit, celebrated on the feast of Pentecost, fills the universe and prepares unity among nations.
The Pope reflected on the role of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity before he prayed the midday Regina Ceoli with those gathered in St. Peter’s Square.
Pentecost, he said, is the fulfillment of the paschal mystery, “the powerful effusion of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles gathered together with Mary, the Mother of the Lord, and the other disciples. It was the ‘baptism of the Church,’ a baptism in the Holy Spirit.”
“God’s voice divinized the human language of the Apostles, who became able to proclaim the one divine Word polyphonically,” the Holy Father noted. “The breath of the Holy Spirit fills the universe, generates faith, brings truth, preparing unity among the nations.”
The Bishop of Rome spoke of the Holy Spirit’s power as the “breath of [God’s] mouth” with the “power to sanctify, to abolish divisions, to resolve the confusion wrought by sin.”
“He, incorporeal and immaterial, bestows the divine goods, assisting living beings, so they act in conformity with the good. As intelligible Light he gives meaning to prayer, he gives vigor to the evangelizing mission, he makes the hearts of those who hear the glad tidings burn, he inspires Christian art and liturgical melody,” he added.
It is the Holy Spirit, the Pope said who “creates faith in us in the moment of our baptism,” and “allows us to live as children of God, conscious and obliging, according to the image of the Only Begotten Son.”
“To the Virgin Mary, temple of the Holy Spirit, we entrust the Church,” Benedict XVI concluded, “that she might always live according to Jesus Christ, his Word, and his commandments, and that through the perennial action of the Spirit Paraclete she might proclaim to all that ‘Jesus is Lord.”
VATICAN CITY, JUNE 12, 2011 (Zenit.org)