“The Holy Spirit, correcting you along the way, never leaves you lying on the ground, never. He takes you by the hand, comforts you and constantly encourages you,” he added.
The pope, who has suffered from knee pain in recent months, did not preside over the Pentecost Mass. He sat in a white chair in front of the congregation to the right of the altar. Francis was assisted to the front of the altar in a wheelchair to offer the homily.
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the 88-year-old dean of the College of Cardinals, served as the main celebrant for the Mass, as he did on Easter Vigil earlier this year.
In his homily, Pope Francis underlined that feelings of “bitterness, pessimism and negativity” never come from the Holy Spirit, but come from evil, which “stokes impatience and self-pity … complaints and criticism, the tendency to blame others for all our problems.”
“The Holy Spirit on the other hand urges us never to lose heart and always to start over again. … Get up! How? By jumping right in, without waiting for someone else. And by spreading hope and joy, not complaints; never envying others, never – envy is the door through which the evil spirit enters — but the Holy Spirit … leads you to rejoice in the successes of others,” he said.
The pope added that the Holy Spirit is “practical” and “wants us to concentrate on the here and now, because the time and place in which we find ourselves are themselves grace-filled.”
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