Vigil with the young people at Randwick Racecourse in Sydney. Discourse of the Holy
Father (excerpts)
Dear Young People,
Once again this evening we have heard Christ’s great promise – “you will receive
power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you”. And we have heard his summons – “be
my witnesses throughout the world” – (Acts 1:8). These were the very last words which
Jesus spoke before his Ascension into heaven. Tonight we focus our attention
on how to become witnesses. We need to understand the person of the Holy Spirit and
his vivifying presence in our lives. This is not easy to comprehend. You are
already well aware that our Christian witness is offered to a world which in many
ways is fragile. The unity of God’s creation is weakened by wounds which run particularly
deep when social relations break apart, or when the human spirit is all but crushed
through the exploitation and abuse of persons. Indeed, society today is being fragmented
by a way of thinking that is inherently short-sighted, because it disregards the full
horizon of truth– the truth about God and about us. By its nature, relativism fails
to see the whole picture. It ignores the very principles which enable us to live
and flourish in unity, order and harmony. Unity and reconciliation cannot be achieved
through our efforts alone. God has made us for one another (cf. Gen 2:24) and only
in God and his Church can we find the unity we seek. Yet, in the face of imperfections
and disappointments – both individual and institutional – we are sometimes tempted
to construct artificially a “perfect” community. That temptation is not new. The
history of the Church includes many examples of attempts to bypass or override human
weaknesses or failures in order to create a perfect unity, a spiritual utopia. Such
attempts to construct unity in fact undermine it! To separate the Holy Spirit from
Christ present in the Church’s institutional structure would compromise the unity
of the Christian community, which is precisely the Spirit’s gift! Unfortunately
the temptation to “go it alone” persists. Some today portray their local community
as somehow separate from the so-called institutional Church, by speaking of the former
as flexible and open to the Spirit and the latter as rigid and devoid of the Spirit.
Unity is of the essence of the Church (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 813);
it is a gift we must recognize and cherish. Tonight, let us pray for the resolve
to nurture unity: contribute to it! resist any temptation to walk away! For it is
precisely the comprehensiveness, the vast vision, of our faith – solid yet open, consistent
yet dynamic, true yet constantly growing in insight – that we can offer our world.
Be watchful! Listen! Through the dissonance and division of our world, can you hear
the concordant voice of humanity? From the forlorn child in a Darfur camp, or a troubled
teenager, or an anxious parent in any suburb, or perhaps even now from the depth of
your own heart, there emerges the same human cry for recognition, for belonging, for
unity. Who satisfies that essential human yearning to be one, to be immersed in communion,
to be built up, to be led to truth? The Holy Spirit! This is the Spirit’s role:
to bring Christ’s work to fulfilment. Enriched with the Spirit’s gifts, you will
have the power to move beyond the piecemeal, the hollow utopia, the fleeting, to offer
the consistency and certainty of Christian witness! In all these ways the Spirit
is the “giver of life”, leading us into the very heart of God. So, the more we allow
the Spirit to direct us, the more perfect will be our configuration to Christ and
the deeper our immersion in the life of the Triune God. This sharing in God’s nature
(cf. 2 Pet 1:4) occurs in the unfolding of the everyday moments of our lives where
he is always present (cf. Bar 3:38). There are times, however, when we might be tempted
to seek a certain fulfilment apart from God. To turn away from him is only a futile
attempt to escape from ourselves (cf. Saint Augustine, Confessions VIII, 7). God
is with us in the reality of life, not the fantasy! It is embrace, not escape, that
we seek! So the Holy Spirit gently but surely steers us back to what is real, what
is lasting, what is true. It is the Spirit who leads us back into the communion of
the Blessed Trinity! The Holy Spirit has been in some ways the neglected person
of the Blessed Trinity. A clear understanding of the Spirit almost seems beyond our
reach. Yet, when I was a small boy, my parents, like yours, taught me the Sign of
the Cross. So, I soon came to realize that there is one God in three Persons, and
that the Trinity is the centre of our Christian faith and life. While I grew up to
have some understanding of God the Father and the Son – the names already conveyed
much – my understanding of the third person of the Trinity remained incomplete. So,
as a young priest teaching theology, I decided to study the outstanding witnesses
to the Spirit in the Church’s history. It was on this journey that I found myself
reading, among others, the great Saint Augustine. Yet his experience of the
love of God present in the Church led him to investigate its source in the life of
the Triune God. This led him to three particular insights about the Holy Spirit as
the bond of unity within the Blessed Trinity: unity as communion, unity as abiding
love, and unity as giving and gift. These three insights are not just theoretical.
They help explain how the Spirit works. In a world where both individuals and communities
often suffer from an absence of unity or cohesion, these insights help us remain attuned
to the Spirit and to extend and clarify the scope of our witness. So, with Augustine’s
help, let us illustrate something of the Holy Spirit’s work. He noted that the two
words “Holy” and “Spirit” refer to what is divine about God; in other words what is
shared by the Father and the Son – their communion. So, if the distinguishing characteristic
of the Holy Spirit is to be what is shared by the Father and the Son, Augustine concluded
that the Spirit’s particular quality is unity. It is a unity of lived communion:
a unity of persons in a relationship of constant giving, the Father and the Son giving
themselves to each other. True unity could never be founded upon relationships which
deny the equal dignity of other persons. Nor is unity simply the sum total of the
groups through which we sometimes attempt to “define” ourselves. Augustine’s
second insight – the Holy Spirit as abiding love – comes from his study of the First
Letter of Saint John. John tells us that “God is love” (1 Jn 4:16). Augustine suggests
that while these words refer to the Trinity as a whole they express a particular characteristic
of the Holy Spirit. Reflecting on the lasting nature of love - “whoever abides in
love remains in God and God in him” (ibid.) - he wondered: is it love or the Holy
Spirit which grants the abiding? This is the conclusion he reaches: “The Holy Spirit
makes us remain in God and God in us; yet it is love that effects this. The Spirit
therefore is God as love!” (De Trinitate, 15.17.31). It is a beautiful explanation:
God shares himself as love in the Holy Spirit. Again, dear friends, we catch a further
glimpse of how much the Holy Spirit offers our world: love which dispels uncertainty;
love which overcomes the fear of betrayal; love which carries eternity within; the
true love which draws us into a unity that abides! The third insight – the Holy
Spirit as gift – Augustine derived from meditating on a Gospel passage we all know
and love: Christ’s conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. Here Jesus
reveals himself as the giver of the living water (cf. Jn 4:10) which later is explained
as the Holy Spirit (cf. Jn 7:39; 1 Cor 12:13). The Spirit is “God’s gift” (Jn 4:10)
- the internal spring (cf. Jn 4:14), who truly satisfies our deepest thirst and leads
us to the Father. From this observation Augustine concludes that God sharing himself
with us as gift is the Holy Spirit (cf. De Trinitate, 15, 18, 32). Friends, again
we catch a glimpse of the Trinity at work: the Holy Spirit is God eternally giving
himself; like a never-ending spring he pours forth nothing less than himself. Samaritan
woman, let us exclaim: give me this water that I may thirst no more! (cf. Jn 4:15).
Dear young people, we have seen that it is the Holy Spirit who brings about the
wonderful communion of believers in Jesus Christ. True to his nature as giver and
gift alike, he is even now working through you. Inspired by the insights of Saint
Augustine: let unifying love be your measure; abiding love your challenge; self-giving
love your mission! Tomorrow, that same gift of the Spirit will be solemnly conferred
upon our confirmation candidates. I shall pray: “give them the spirit of wisdom and
understanding, the spirit of right judgement and courage, the spirit of knowledge
and reverence … and fill them with the spirit of wonder and awe”. What constitutes
our faith is not primarily what we do but what we receive. After all, many generous
people who are not Christian may well achieve far more than we do. Friends, do you
accept being drawn into God’s Trinitarian life? Do you accept being drawn into his
communion of love? The Spirit’s gifts working within us give direction and definition
to our witness. Directed to unity, the gifts of the Spirit bind us more closely to
the whole Body of Christ (cf. Lumen Gentium, 11), equipping us better to build up
the Church in order to serve the world (cf. Eph 4:13). They call us to active and
joyful participation in the life of the Church: in parishes and ecclesial movements,
in religious education classes, in university chaplaincies and other catholic organizations.
I am filled with deep joy to be with you. Let us invoke the Holy Spirit: he
is the artisan of God’s works (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 741). Let his
gifts shape you! Just as the Church travels the same journey with all humanity, so
too you are called to exercise the Spirit’s gifts amidst the ups and downs of your
daily life. Let your faith mature through your studies, work, sport, music and art.
Let it be sustained by prayer and nurtured by the sacraments, and thus be a source
of inspiration and help to those around you. In the end, life is not about accumulation.
It is much more than success. To be truly alive is to be transformed from within,
open to the energy of God’s love. In accepting the power of the Holy Spirit you too
can transform your families, communities and nations. Set free the gifts! Let wisdom,
courage, awe and reverence be the marks of greatness!
The full text of
the Holy Father's discourses are available on the Holy See's website: www.vatian.va,
and in the vatican newspaper "L' Osservatore Romano"