Complete catechesis of Pope Francis: The Holy Spirit guides the people of God

In the General Audience this Wednesday, May 29, Pope Francis began a new cycle of catechesis on “The Spirit and the Bride,” focusing today on the way in which the Spirit “guides the people of God toward Jesus, our hope.” ”.

Below is the complete catechesis of Pope Francis:

Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!

Today, in this catechesis we begin a cycle of reflections with the theme “The Holy Spirit and the Bride”, the wife is the Church. The Holy Spirit guides God’s people to encounter Jesus, our hope. We will take this journey through the three great stages of salvation history: the Old Testament, the New Testament and the time of the Church. Always keeping our gaze fixed on Jesus, our hope.

In these first catechesis on the Spirit in the Old Testament, we will not do “biblical archaeology.” On the contrary, we will discover that what is given as a promise in the Old Testament has been fully realized in Christ. It will be like following the path of the sun from dawn to noon.

Let’s start with the first two verses of the entire Bible, which go like this: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and deserted, and darkness covered the deep, and the Spirit of God hovered above the waters” (Gn 1,1-2). The Spirit of God is presented to us here as the mysterious power that causes the world to pass from its initial formless, deserted and gloomy state to its orderly and harmonious state. The Spirit makes harmony, harmony in life and harmony in the world. In other words, it is He who makes the world go from chaos to cosmos, that is, from confusion to something beautiful and orderly. This is, in fact, the meaning of the Greek word kosmosas well as from the Latin word the worldthat is, something beautiful, orderly, clean and harmonious, because the Spirit is harmony.

This still vague indication of the action of the Holy Spirit in creation becomes more precise in the following revelation. In a psalm we read: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, by the breath of his mouth all his armies” (Sal 33.6); and again: “You send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth” (Sal 104,30).

This line of development is very clear in the New Testament, which describes the intervention of the Holy Spirit in the new creation using precisely the images that we read in relation to the origin of the world: the dove hovering over the waters of the Jordan at baptism. of Jesus (cf. Mt 3.16); Jesus who, in the Upper Room, breathes on the disciples and tells them: “Receive the Holy Spirit” (Jn 20:22), just as at the beginning God breathed his breath on Adam (cf. Gn 2,7).

The apostle Paul introduces a new element in this relationship between the Holy Spirit and creation. He speaks of a universe that “groans and suffers as if in labor pains” (cf. Rm 8,22). He suffers because of the man who has subjected him to the “bondage of corruption” (cf. vv. 20-21). It is a reality that concerns us closely and dramatically. The Apostle sees the cause of the suffering of creation in the corruption and sin of humanity that has dragged it away from God. This is as true today as it was then. We see the havoc that humanity has caused and continues to cause in creation, especially in the part of it that has the greatest capacity to exploit its resources.

Saint Francis of Assisi shows us a beautiful way out, a way out to return to the harmony of the Creative Spirit: the path of contemplation and praise. He wanted a song of praise to the Creator to rise from the creatures, we remember: “Praise be to you, my Lord…”, the Canticle of Saint Francis of Assisi.

“The heavens tell the glory of God” – sings a psalm (19:1) – but they need the man and the woman to give voice to this silent cry of theirs. And in the “Santo” of the Mass we repeat each time: “The heavens and the earth are full of your glory.” They are, so to speak, “pregnant” for her, but they need the hands of a good midwife to give birth to this praise of hers. Our vocation in the world, Paul reminds us again, is to be “praise of his glory” (Ef 1,12). It is about putting the joy of contemplating before the joy of possessing. And no one has been happier about creatures than Francis of Assisi, who did not want to possess any of them.

Brothers and sisters, the Holy Spirit, who in the beginning transformed chaos into cosmos, is working to bring about this transformation in each person. Through the prophet Ezekiel, God promises: “I will give you a new heart; I will put a new Spirit within you… I will put my Spirit within you” (no 36:26-27). Because our heart resembles that deserted and dark abyss of the first verses of Genesis. Opposite feelings and desires stir in it: those of the flesh and those of the spirit.

We are all, in a certain sense, that “kingdom divided within itself” that Jesus speaks of in the Gospel (cf. Mc 3.24). Around us we can say that there is an external chaos, a social chaos, a political chaos. Let’s think about wars, about so many boys and girls to eat, about so many social injustices. This is external chaos. But there is also an internal, internal chaos within each of us. The first cannot be cured if we do not begin to cure the second. Brothers and sisters, let’s do a good job to make our inner confusion a clarity of the Holy Spirit, it is the power of God that does this and we open our hearts so that He can do it.

May this reflection awaken in us the desire to experience the Holy Creator Spirit. For more than a millennium, the Church has put the cry on our lips to ask: “Veni Creator Spiritus!”, Come, oh Creator Spirit! Visit our minds. Fill the hearts you have created with heavenly grace.” Let us ask the Holy Spirit to come to us and make us new people, with the newness of the Spirit. Thank you.