“Today, if we listen to the Spirit, we will not be concerned with conservatives and progressives, traditionalists and innovators, right and left. When those become our criteria, then the Church has forgotten the Spirit,” he observed.
“The Paraclete impels us to unity, to concord, to the harmony of diversity. He makes us see ourselves as parts of the same body, brothers and sisters of one another. Let us look to the whole! The enemy wants diversity to become opposition and so he makes them become ideologies. Say no to ideologies, yes to the whole.”
The pope said that the Holy Spirit’s third suggestion, putting God first, was “the decisive step in the spiritual life.”
“The Spirit affirms the primacy of grace,” he said. “Only by emptying ourselves, do we leave room for the Lord; only by giving ourselves to him, do we find ourselves; only by becoming poor in spirit, do we become rich in the Holy Spirit.”
“This is also true of the Church. We save no one, not even ourselves, by our own efforts. If we give priority to our own projects, our structures, our plans for reform, we will be concerned only about effectiveness, efficiency, we will think only in horizontal terms and, as a result, we will bear no fruit. An ‘-ism’ is an ideology that divides and separates.”
He continued: “The Church is human, but it is not merely a human organization, it is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Jesus brought the fire of the Spirit to the earth and the Church is reformed by the anointing of grace, the gratuity of the anointing of grace, the power of prayer, the joy of mission, and the disarming beauty of poverty. Let us put God in first place!”
On the eve of Pentecost, Pope Francis sent a video message to Christians attending an ecumenical prayer vigil at Christ Church, an Anglican church in the Old City of Jerusalem.
He said: “Can the world today say of Christians, of them: ‘see how they love one another’ or can they say with truth, ‘see how they hate one another,’ or ‘see how they fight’?”
“What has happened to us? We have sinned against God and against our brothers. We are divided, we have broken into a thousand pieces what God has made with so much love, compassion, and tenderness. We all, all of us, need to ask for forgiveness, to the Father of all, and we also need to forgive ourselves.”
The Pentecost Vigil was organized by the Catholic Charismatic Renewal International Service (CHARIS). The pope praised the organization for promoting Christian unity through the vigil.
“Brothers and sisters, tonight can be a prophecy, it can be the beginning of the witness that we Christians, together, have to give to the world: to be witnesses of God’s love that has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us,” he said.
The pope ended his homily in St. Peter’s Basilica with a prayer: “Holy Spirit, Paraclete Spirit, comfort our hearts. Make us missionaries of your comfort, paracletes of your mercy before the world.”
“Our Advocate, sweet counselor of the soul, make us witnesses of the ‘today’ of God, prophets of unity for the Church and humanity, and apostles grounded in your grace, which creates and renews all things. Amen.”
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