By Linda Bordoni
Pope Francis encouraged the
faithful of the city of Rome to allow the Spirit to take them by the hand and
bring them to the heart of the city to hear the cry of those in need of
salvation.
He was celebrating Holy Mass
with the faithful of the Diocese of Rome in St. Peter’s Square on Saturday evening,
the eve of the feast of Pentecost.
Noting that the celebration
marks the evening of the last day of the Easter Season, the Pope said, on the
feast of Pentecost, “Jesus is in our midst and proclaims out loud: Let anyone
who thirsts come to me and drink”.
The Pope said that the Holy
Spirit springs from the heart of the Risen Jesus, and fills our hearts with
mercy.
“How I wish that the people
who live in Rome would recognize the Church, recognize us”, for the humanity,
the mercy, the tenderness of which there is so much need, he said.
The Church is a mother
He said they would feel at
home, at the “maternal home” where they are always welcome and where they can
always return.
“They would always feel
welcomed, listened to, understood, helped to take a step toward the kingdom of
God… As a mother knows how, even when the children have already grown up,” he
said.
Pope Francis said that these
thoughts concerning the maternal aspect of the Church remind him of when, 75
years ago, on 11 June 1944, Pope Pius XII carried out a special act of
thanksgiving and supplication of the Virgin, for the protection of the city of
Rome.
He said he did this in the
Church of St Ignatius, where the venerated image of the Madonna of Divine Love
had been brought.
“Divine Love is the Holy
Spirit that springs from the Heart of Christ,” he said.
And reflecting on how there
are those in our time, as in every time, who seek to build “a city and a tower
that reaches up to the sky,” the Pope lamented such human projects in which
there is no space for God.
The Pope said that so often we
are so taken by our own constructions that give us the illusion of touching
heaven that we end up losing sight of the true horizon.
“Instead, the Spirit explodes
into the world from on High, from God’s womb, there where the Son was
generated, and makes all things new” he said.
The primacy of the Spirit
What we are celebrating today,
all together, in the city of Rome, Pope Francis explained, is the primacy of
the Spirit “that makes us fall silent before the unpredictability of God’s
plan, and then fills us with joy.”
“So it was this that
God had in mind for us!” This journey as Church, this passage, this Exodus,
this arrival in the promised land, the city of Jerusalem, of the doors that are
always open for everyone, where the various languages spoken by man are
composed in the harmony of the Spirit,” he said.
He said that the “cry of the
people who live in this city and the cry of creation as a whole, is none other
than the cry of the Spirit: it is the birth of a new world”.
The Pope added that if “pride
and a presumed moral superiority do not dull our hearing, we will realize that
behind the cry of so many people there is none other than the authentic cry of
the Holy Spirit”.
It is the Spirit, he said, who
pushes us, once again, to not be content, to seek to put ourselves back on the
road; it is the Spirit who will save us from every diocesan “reorganization.”
“Let us then allow the Spirit
to take us by the hand and bring us to the heart of the city to hear its cry”,
Pope Francis said, but for this to be able to happen, our hearts must become
“attentive and sensitive to the sufferings and dreams of men and women, to
those who cry in secret as they raise their hands towards Heaven, because they
have nothing else to hold onto on earth”.
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