OMELIE / Omelie EN

23 mag 2021

23/05/2021 - Pentecost Sunday - year B

23/05/2021 - Pentecost Sunday - year B

Reading 1 Acts 2,1-11 Psalm 103/104 Reading 2 GAL 5,16-25 Gospel JN 15,26-27; 16,12-15

“When the Advocate comes…”: Jesus is reassuring His own people. They will not be left alone, by themselves, pray of their weakness and of their ignorance. The Advocate is coming. He who is going to help them in every difficult circumstance will come. The word used by Jesus to introduce the Spirit to the disciples means that He will be close to them in every situation: when they will be accused, when they will be persecuted, when they will be tired, when they will be forgetful, when they will have doubts, when they will need to take difficult decisions. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, is the security of the Church. Jesus' promise, in fact, is addressed to the first disciples, but also to all of those who will follow Him throughout the ages. We too, therefore, live this certainty: the Father is sending us His Spirit, the Spirit of truth which gives testimony to Jesus.

First of all we may ask ourselves: when is the Spirit coming? How do we become aware that He has come? Which ones are the signs of His presence in us and in the Church?

The apostles had very great signs when the Spirit has visited them for the first time: they needed something extraordinary in order to be woken up and freed from weakness and fear. They heard a noise, they have seen flames from a single fire resting on each one of them, they had the experience of speaking in foreign languages. Those signs convinced them that the coming of the Holy Spirit has an effect on everything, on what is inside and outside us: therefore, we cannot either be frightened because of our weakness and the power of evil, nor become proud because of our skills, because God can intervene even where men can do nothing. The same signs have helped them to open themselves to the idea that God’s love had to reach all peoples of earth through them.

We cannot ask for the same signs when the Spirit comes for us: He has for each one and every age different ways to come. Maybe for us He can come even without any sign, but His coming will never happen fruitlessly. His presence is transforming everything, and it begins to transform from the inside our heart too. Today Saint Paul is giving us a list of the behaviours typically coming from the Spirit of God in us, and Jesus tells us which is His action in the life of the Christian and the Church.

Let us first follow the apostle’s observation. As long as in us finds place caring for satisfying the pleasures of the body, both sexual and of the gut, as long as we give space to witchcraft and magical or superstitious beliefs, as long as we try to overpower others and we let us be dragged by our desires and envy into quarrels, all of this is a sign that God’s Spirit did not find open the door of our hearts for Him to enter. If we are in this situation we need to still keep our attention firmly on the ten commandments and undergo a difficult and tiresome obedience with sincere repentance and humility.

We will be able to say that the Holy Spirit has arrived in us when inside us lives the love towards everyone, when the joy and the peace are making us affable and generous, when patience and gracefulness make us be serene among difficulties and obstacles, when goodness, faithfulness and meekness are getting us into tasks even difficult ingloriously, when we watch our tongue, our eyes, our feelings and our desires in order to be the Lord Jesus' servants. When God’s Spirit arrives I am not checking myself against the commandments, but I am dealing with the love of the Father and the love of Jesus, who is offering Himself for us.

From these observations we realise how important is the coming of God’s Spirit. and also how necessary is that we prepare a clear path for Him. Jesus is letting us understand that the Spirit’s task is quite difficult: He needs to reveal us “much more” which we “cannot bear it now”. He needs to tell us up to where the Father’s love reaches, and therefore up to where our love needs to get so we may really be children of God. He will do it by giving us testimony about Jesus, making us understand then the love of His passion and death, the preciousness of His sacrifice, the glory of His cross. And He will not stop at making us understand, but He will make us witnesses of Jesus ourselves: in each situation of life, in everyday’s sufferings and those coming from the misunderstanding of faith of whoever is around us, the Spirit of God will give us strength to be faithful and will use us as s tool of the Father’s love in order to attract others to our Lord and Shepherd. The same Spirit will make us appreciate every word and action of Jesus: “he will take from what is mine and declare it to you”. He is the “Spirit of truth”: His main action is to show us the face of God which men cannot see, because sin is preventing them to. He is showing us the light and the love of the Father who meets us through Jesus. He is the Spirit of truth also because, by entering in us, makes our life a tool for God’s revelation: they who will meet us will be able to enjoy something of the flavour of the Father’s wisdom and the blessings which He wants to cover every man with.

Come, Holy Spirit, Advocate and Protector, come. Make me understand the Father and Jesus, and transform me, so from me too may overflow His love and His truth!