Homily of Pope Leo XIV at the Pentecost Mass

Pope Leo XIV celebrated this Sunday the Mass of Pentecost in the Plaza de San Pedro in the Vatican, within the framework of the celebration of the Jubilee of Movements, Associations and New Communities.

Next, the full text of the homily of Pope Leo XIV on Pentecost 2025 Sunday.

Brothers and sisters:

“Brothers shines for us, the pleasant day in which (…) Jesus Christ, the Lord, after resurrected and glorified by his ascent, sent the Holy Spirit” (S. Agustín, Sermo 271, 1).

And also today what happened in the Cenacle; The gift of the Holy Spirit descends on us as an impetuous wind that shakes, as a heat that awakens us, as a fire that illuminates us (cf. Acts 2,1-11).

As we have heard in the first reading, the spirit carries out something extraordinary in the life of the apostles. They, after the death of Jesus, had locked themselves in fear and sadness, but now they finally receive a new look and intelligence of the heart that helps them interpret the events that have already happened to have an intimate experience of the presence of the risen: the Holy Spirit overcomes his fear, breaks the interior chains, relieves the wounds, the unege with strength and gives them the courage to meet everyone to announce the works of God.

The text of the Acts of the Apostles tells us that, in Jerusalem, at that time, there was a multitude of the most varied backgrounds, and, even so, “each one heard them speak in their own language” (v. 6). And then, it is so that in Pentecost the doors of the Cenacle open because the spirit opens the borders. As Benedict XVI states: «The Holy Spirit gives the gift of understanding. It exceeds the rupture initiated in Babel – the confusion of hearts, which confronts each other », and opens the borders. (…) The Church must always be what it is again: it must open the borders between the peoples and knock down the barriers between classes and races.

In it there can be neither forgotten or despised. In the Church there are only free brothers and sisters (Homily de Pentecost, May 15, 2005).

This is an eloquent image of Pentecost on which I would like to stop with you to meditate. The spirit opens the borders, first and foremost, within us. It is the gift that opens our life to love. And this presence of the Lord dissolves our hardness, our locks, the selfishness, the fears that paralyze us, the narcissms that make us turn only around ourselves.

The Holy Spirit comes to challenge, within us, the risk of a life that is atrophy, absorbed by individualism. It is sad to observe how in a world where the occasions are multiplied to socialize, we run the risk of being paradoxically more alone, always connected and yet unable to “establish links”, always immersed in the crowd, but subtracting disoriented and lonely travelers.

The Spirit of God, on the other hand, makes us discover a new way of seeing and living life. It opens to the meeting with ourselves, beyond the masks we are wearing; He leads us to meet the Lord teaching us to experience his joy; It convinces us – according to the same words of Jesus barely proclaimed – that only if we remain in love we also receive the strength of observing his word and, therefore, of being transformed by her.

Open the borders inside us, so that our life becomes a hospital space. The spirit also opens the borders in our relationships. Indeed, Jesus says that this gift is love between Him and the Father who comes to live in us. And when the love of God dwells in us, we are able to open ourselves to the brothers, to overcome our rigidities, to overcome the fear towards which it is different, to educate the passions that rise within us.

But the spirit also transforms those more hidden dangers that pollute our relationships, such as misunderstandings, prejudices, instrumentalizations. I also think – with a lot of pain – in

The cases in which a relationship is intoxicated by the will to dominate the other, an attitude that frequently leads to violence, as unfortunately demonstrate the numerous and recent cases of feminicide.

The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, makes the fruits that help live authentic and healthy relationships mature in us: “Love, joy and peace, magnanimity, affability, goodness and trust” (Gal 5,22). In this way, the Spirit expands the borders of our relations with others and opens us to the joy of fraternity. And this is also a decisive criterion for the Church; We are truly the church of the risen and the disciples of Pentecost only if there are neither borders nor divisions among us, if in the Church we know how to dialogue and welcome each other integrating our differences, if as a church we become a cozy and hospitable space for all.

To conclude, the spirit opens the borders also among the peoples. In Pentecost the apostles speak the languages ​​of those who find and the chaos of Babel is finally appeased by the harmony generated by the spirit. The differences, when the divine breath joins our hearts and makes us see in the other the face of a brother, are not an occasion of division and conflict, but a common heritage that we can all benefit, and that puts us all on the way, together, in the fraternity.

The Spirit breaks the borders and abate the walls of indifference and hate, because “teaches us everything” and “reminds us of Jesus’ words” (cf. Jn 14,26); And, therefore, the first thing that teaches, remembers and prints in our hearts is the commandment of love, which the Lord has put in the center and on the top of everything. And where there is love there is no space for prejudices, for the security distances that move us away from others, for the logic of the exclusion that we see unfortunately arise also in political nationalisms.

Precisely celebrating Pentecost, Pope Francis observed that «today in the world there is a lot of discord, a lot of division. We are all connected and, nevertheless, we are disconnected among us, anesthetized by indifference and oppressed by loneliness ”(Homily, May 28, 2023). And of all this are a tragic signal the wars that stir our planet.

Let’s invoke the spirit of love and peace, so that it opens the borders, overcome the walls, dissolve hate and help us live as children of the only father who is in heaven.

Brothers and sisters: For Pentecost the church and the world are renewed! That the vigorous wind of the Spirit comes over us and within us, open the borders of the heart, give us the grace of the encounter with God, expand the horizons of love and hold our efforts for the construction of a world where peace reigns.

That Mary Most Holy, a woman of Pentecost, a virgin visited by the spirit, mother full of grace, accompany us and intercede for us.