Renew the Face of the Earth

There is a saying: "Send forth your Spirit and all things will be created and you shall renew the face of the earth." Do you realize that that is true--that he can come like a gentle breath "blowing where it listens and you hear the sound thereof but cannot tell whence it comes, and where it goes," and that he can touch your soul and make everything different? What was real before still remains, yet everything has been renewed. Then you become aware that you have a heart and that you, too, have received the ability to love, and things are filled with a gentle and holy meaning, and you know that everything is good and that it is worthwhile--divinely worthwhile--to be alive and to persevere.

--Monsignor Romano Guardini

Memoria and History

 “The Holy Spirit is always somewhat ‘the unknown’ of the faith...Even now, many Christians do not know who the Holy Spirit is, what the Holy Spirit is. And you sometimes hear: ‘But I get on well enough with the Father and with Son, because I pray the Our Father to the Father, I have communion with the Son, but I do not know what to do with the Holy Spirit. . .' Or people say, ‘The Holy Spirit is the dove, the one that gives us the seven gifts.’ But in this way the poor Holy Spirit always comes last and finds no place in our lives.

"[Holy Spirit is] God active in us, God who helps us remember, [who] awakens our memory... A Christian without memory is not a true Christian: he or she is a prisoner of circumstance, of the moment, a man or woman who has no history. He or she does have a history, but does not how to enter into history. It is the Spirit that teaches us how to enter into history. Historical memory ... When in the Letter to the Hebrews, the author says: ‘Remember your fathers in the faith’ – memory; ‘remember the early days of your faith, how you were courageous’ - memory. A memory of our life, of our history, a memory of the moment when we had the grace of meeting Jesus, the memory of all that Jesus has told us...That memory that comes from the heart, that is a grace of the Holy Spirit... [Remembering] also means remembering one’s own misery, that which makes us slaves, and together with them, the grace of God that redeems us from our miseries.

"Our God is moving forward on the road with us, He is among us, He walks with us. He saves us. He makes history with us. Be mindful of all that, and life becomes more fruitful, with the grace of memory.”
--Pope Francis, Homily on May 13, 2013
http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-at-mass-the-holy-spirit-and-historical-memory

The Holy Spirit: Unity and Multiplicity

[T]he Holy Spirit would appear to create disorder in the Church, since he brings the diversity of charisms and gifts; yet all this, by his working, is a great source of wealth, for the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of unity, which does not mean uniformity, but which leads everything back to harmony. In the Church, it is the Holy Spirit who creates harmony. One of Fathers of the Church has an expression which I love: the Holy Spirit himself is harmony – “Ipse harmonia est”. Only the Spirit can awaken diversity, plurality and multiplicity, while at the same time building unity. Here too, when we are the ones who try to create diversity and close ourselves up in what makes us different and other, we bring division. When we are the ones who want to build unity in accordance with our human plans, we end up creating uniformity, standardization. But if instead we let ourselves be guided by the Spirit, richness, variety and diversity never become a source of conflict, because he impels us to experience variety within the communion of the Church. Journeying together in the Church, under the guidance of her pastors who possess a special charism and ministry, is a sign of the working of the Holy Spirit. Having a sense of the Church is something fundamental for every Christian, every community and every movement. It is the Church which brings Christ to me, and me to Christ; parallel journeys are dangerous! When we venture beyond (proagon) the Church’s teaching and community, and do not remain in them, we are not one with the God of Jesus Christ (cf. 2 Jn 9). So let us ask ourselves: Am I open to the harmony of the Holy Spirit, overcoming every form of exclusivity? Do I let myself be guided by him, living in the Church and with the Church?
--Pope Francis, Homily on Pentecost 2013
http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-at-pentecost-newness-harmony-and-mission

God's Surprises

Newness always makes us a bit fearful, because we feel more secure if we have everything under control, if we are the ones who build, programme and plan our lives in accordance with our own ideas, our own comfort, our own preferences. This is also the case when it comes to God. Often we follow him, we accept him, but only up to a certain point. It is hard to abandon ourselves to him with complete trust, allowing the Holy Spirit to be the soul and guide of our lives in our every decision. We fear that God may force us to strike out on new paths and leave behind our all too narrow, closed and selfish horizons in order to become open to his own. Yet throughout the history of salvation, whenever God reveals himself, he brings newness and change, and demands our complete trust: Noah, mocked by all, builds an ark and is saved; Abram leaves his land with only a promise in hand; Moses stands up to the might of Pharaoh and leads his people to freedom; the apostles, huddled fearfully in the Upper Room, go forth with courage to proclaim the Gospel. This is not a question of novelty for novelty’s sake, the search for something new to relieve our boredom, as is so often the case in our own day. The newness which God brings into our life is something that actually brings fulfilment, that gives true joy, true serenity, because God loves us and desires only our good. Let us ask ourselves: Are we open to “God’s surprises”? Or are we closed and fearful before the newness of the Holy Spirit? Do we have the courage to strike out along the new paths which God’s newness sets before us, or do we resist, barricaded in transient structures which have lost their capacity for openness to what is new?
--Pope Francis, Homily at Pentecost 2013
http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-at-pentecost-newness-harmony-and-mission

The Law of the Spirit

"The hour of the law’s fulfillment, is when the law reaches its maturity when it becomes the law of the Spirit. Moving forward on this road is somewhat risky, but it is the only road to maturity, to leave behind the times in which we are not mature. Part of the law’s journey to maturity, which comes with preaching Jesus, always involves fear; fear of the freedom that the Spirit gives us. The law of the Spirit makes us free! This freedom frightens us a little, because we are afraid we will confuse the freedom of the Spirit with human freedom. "
--Pope Francis, Homily on June 12, 2013
http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-at-mass-true-progress-is-in-trusting-the-spir

The Veil of the Temple

Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

...and Lord Marchmain made the sign of the cross. Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a little thing, not a passing not of recognition, and a phrase came back to me from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom.

Jeremiah 5:14

Behold, I make my words
in your mouth, a fire.

What Happens When We Love, by Monsignor Guardini

A person who has been wounded is comforted when someone who loves him awakens the hidden energy within him so that it passes through the wound in a healing stream. A person who is spiritually dried up is comforted when someone who loves him releases the wave of life within and everything is revived. A person who has lost things of great value, who has had his work destroyed, and his hopes dashed, is comforted when someone who loves him allies himself with something that lies at a deeper level, underneath the individual possession and the individual work; allies himself with the fundamental creative will, and rouses it to new activity; allies himself with that innermost soul that is above change and loss and is the eternal strength of the heart; admitting the loss that is lost in time, but winning it anew from the timelessness of faith in God. A person whose heart is sullied is comforted when someone who loves him is able to touch the purity that lives below the sin, and rouse new confidence in his ability to overcome the ugliness of his heart. A person who has sinned and can find no escape from his troubled conscience is comforted when someone who loves him is able, without the slightest presumption, to shed light on the sinner's self-deception, to release and fortify the will and open up new ways and possibilities. There is comfort when the lover is able to soften the hardened, to touch the paralyzed with relaxing warmth, to give a new direction to an erring mind. Human love, really pure and selfless human love, is able to comfort. But it soon attains its limits. Human love is not the love of God. Christ sent us the One who is "the nearness" between the Father and the Son: the Holy Spirit. He is the holy inwardness of God himself; in the secret language of love he is the "tie," the "kiss." In him God has come to us as the Comforter.

Monsignor Romano Guardini (died 1968) was born in Italy and was a renowned theologian and writer.