It is my firm conviction that one of the greatest fruits of the Second Vatican Council is the rise of the Charismatic Renewal in the Catholic Church. Over the past several decades, you and your predecessors have imitated the risen Lord who said, ``I have come to light a fire on the earth.'' (Lk. 12:49) Through your preaching, your witness, your enthusiasm, and your celebration of the gifts of the Spirit, you have enlightened the Church, stirring her to greater life. The Charismatic Renewal is like a mighty wind that shook the upper room on Pentecost and in time rocked the entire world. Always remember that you as a community continue to offer the whole church of Jesus Christ and a society so desperately in need, the fire of God's love.
On this great feast of the Holy Spirit, let us reflect on one, some call the most overlooked, of the Divine Persons. In the classical theology of the Church, the Holy Spirit is the love shared between the Father and the Son, or in St. Bernard's loving image, the kiss or embrace of the Father and the Son. As such, the Holy Spirit is not so much a thing or a substance as an activity, a passion, a shared energy. The Father and the Son go out of themselves in a sort of mutual ecstasy and that ecstasy is the Spirit. St. Thomas Aquinas speaks of the third person of the Trinity as the breathing back and forth of the Father and the Son, the heartbeat, the living rhythm of God. The power that seized the apostles on Pentecost, the wind and flames that animate your lives and your ministries, is this diving life operating.
This is not simply and abstraction. It is at the very heart of the Christian life. What we announce to the world and what we strive to embody in our lives is this message of love, this message of ecstasy. The Spirit is the pearl of great price, the meaning of life, the only sure path to joy. When we forget ourselves in love, we come to the fullness of life. We discover who we are. When we imitate the very being and energy of God, allowing ourselves to be caught up in the wind of the divine Spirit, we find that happiness that God wishes, above all, to share with us.
Psychological research has confirmed that when people forget, when they transcend, when they go out of themselves, they are most content. This could involve reading a book, climbing a mountain, engaging in a lively conversation, playing a complex game or performing an act of love or charity. This also corresponds to what the Christian spiritual tradition has always taught: that we human beings are happiest when we look beyond ourselves, when we love God and when we love one another, because then we imitate God who is love. This is why Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit on the disciples. The risen Lord wants them to share in God's inner being and energy. He wants them to participate in the breathing back and forth of the Father and the Son and the Spirit. He wants them to experience some of the ecstasy of the Godhead. In His intimate conversation with the disciples, the night before He died, Jesus summed up His life, His message, His teaching, in a very, very simple command: ``Love one another'' and be ethically upright. What He meant was, be who God is. He urged His followers, which includes all of us, both you and me, to live in the self-forgetting love of the Holy Spirit. After breathing on the disciples, Jesus of course sends them out, to proclaim, to live, to embody the Spirit.
All of us Christians, including certainly the members of the Charismatic Renewal, have this great task of bearing the breath of God to a world that is dying from selfishness and fear. To the violent streets of the city you must go. To the families torn apart by dissension and intrigue, you must go. To young people in the grip of despair, you must go. To your friends and colleagues caught in the trap of materialism and careerism, you must go. In a word, to all those who have forgotten how to lose themselves in love, you must carry the breath of God's love. Wind, breath, flame, energy, and life in the Holy Spirit of God: this is our beginning and this is our end. This is our mission and this is our task. This is indeed our goal.
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