Walking with Francis

Pope Francis I is a man of energy and enthusiasm. He may be in his late seventies, but he is, in spirit, still in his youth.  The youth of the Spirit. He has the same gift of enthusiasm that the early Christians had.

When we read the Acts of the Apostles, we cannot but be enthused ourselves.  We are amazed each time  we read anew about the account of those men, women and children who took the Gospel message across the world as they knew it then.  Their courage, joy, steadfastness and sheer vitality catch at our hearts and make us feel good. What other qualities did they have that made them so memorable?

Well courage for a start;  then we could add openness to the work of the Spirit, faithfulness, integrity, humility, truthfulness, justice,  a love of prayer.  The list could go on....

 

Looking at what Pope Francis is saying and doing since his inauguration as Supreme Pontiff, we can see the same qualities surfacing in him.  As our leader, he is following the example of all our previous popes in his desire for a renewed Pentecost in our time. It was Pope John XXIII who, at the age of 78, started the Second Vatican Council fifty years ago by saying:

 

"Renew in us, Lord, the wonders of the First Pentecost"

 

and Paul V1th, his successor who declared "we need the fresh breath of the Holy Spirit" on our

world today.  Succeeding Popes have urged us to open our minds, our hearts and our lives to the power of the living God.  We now have Pope Benedict's Year of Faith in order to help us to do just that.

Francis has opened up a new window on the world, on the Church, on us all from the Vatican.  He strides through the byways of Vatican City and its environs with a new energy, a wide smile and with what has been called by journalists the "elan" of a Jesuit!  Let's look at some of his recent sayings:

"What a joy it is for me to announce this message: CHRIST IS RISEN!" 

 I would like to go out to every house, and every family, especially where the suffering is greatest, in hospitals, in prisons...

 

Most of all I would like to enter every heart, for it is there that God wants to sow this GOOD NEWS.

Jesus is risen!! There is hope for you, you are no longer in the power of sin, of evil!

LOVE has triumphed, mercy has been victorious! The mercy of God ALWAYS triumphs!"

"Don't look at the Gospel purely through the intellect, without regard for love or beauty" he advised the employees of the Vatican printing press and newspapers.  "When ideology enters into our understanding of the Gospel, we understand NOTHING. Ideologies falsify the Gospel. The path of love, the way of the Gospel is simple. It is the road of conversion, the road the saints understood,  the road of humility, the road of love, of the heart:  the way of beauty. The Gospel is so beautiful, it makes us beautiful with the beauty of HOLINESS."

"Don't leave the Church out, you cannot follow Jesus, love Jesus, without the Church! You cannot find him.  It is the Church which gives us Jesus, gives us IDENTITY"

"You must announce Jesus with your LIFE, with your WITNESS and with your WORDS!"

"Don't be afraid to swim against the tide," he told the young people he was about to confirm. "it is good for your heart!"

And to ten young men on their ordination day.  "proclaim the Gospel with JOY and don't forget to thank your parents, your grandmothers, your catechists, for passing on the faith to you!"

 He himself was very influenced by his grandmother, who was his mentor throughout this life.

Finally, he said, wistfully, at the beginning of his pontificate.  

"How I would like a Church which is poor and for the poor!"

The fresh breath of the Spirit is forming us into a new pentecostal community.  So let's pray together:

"Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on us, on our hopes and dreams, on our mistakes, on our loved ones, on those who walk other paths.  Make us all into a world-wide community of love and hope and friendship! " We ask this with faith in the power of your Spirit.  Amen.

Have a lovely Pentecost!

Living in the Power of the Spirit

In the early days of the Second Vatican Council, Cardinal Montini, who later became Pope Paul VI, said that one of the main purposes of the Council was to ensure that the fresh breath of the Spirit swept through the Church.   He wanted families to be renewed, old quarrels mended,  nations to be at peace with one another.  It was a dream, and like all dreams part of it faded into the darkness of reality.  Yet the hope remained.

That was in 1963, 49 years ago.  Look at the world around you. Has this dream faded into antiquity?  No. Has it survived intact?  As a hope, yes! As a reality in our lives? Only partly so.  Why is this? Well we don’t have to look beyond ourselves.  We have been baptized, confirmed, educated in the faith for many years perhaps, and yet we still remain unfulfilled, static even.  Is that the fault of the Holy Spirit?  Emphatically “No!”  We know very well that the fault lies with us.  We lack that spark, that passion, that intense desire to bring about, in our time, a new Pentecost which will transform our world, transform our Church, transform ourselves, so that we become communities of faith, reaching out to one another through our prayer, through our lives.

The First Christians seemed so happy, so alive.  Didn’t  they? They shared their goods, they prayed together each day, they lived lives of honesty, integrity and joy. But reading between the lines of the Book of Acts we see the struggles they had – the differences of opinion between the apostles themselves with regard to the work they had been given to do, and much more.  We see Paul, that loose cannon, thrown among them by the Damascus event, allowing the Jewish converts to keep their food laws, his implacability when opposing Peter, their leader, when he clearly believed him to be wrong.  We see the greed of some of the converts,  Ananias and Sapphira, for example, who wanted to defraud the community of part of the money they had promised them.  It couldn’t have been easy for those First Century Christians, even though they had received the Holy Spirit in a blistering, never-to-be-forgotten way through huge globules of fire that rested over each of their heads.   Is anything that is worth-while easy?

We know it isn’t. But those Early Christians never forgot the experience of receiving the Holy Spirit.  They clung on to it through thick and thin, and passed its wonders and its effect, on to their children and their grandchildren.  It became a reality for them.  A transforming reality that made others say in amazement: “Look how the Christians love one another!”   Acts, Chapter 2: 42-47 give us a picture of the transforming power of the Spirit:

They remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood (and sisterhood!), to the breaking of bread, and to the prayers.

The many miracles and signs worked through the apostles made a deep impression on everyone.

The faithful all lived together, and owned all things in common: they sold their goods and possessions and shared out the proceeds among themselves, according to what each one needed.

They went as a body to the Temple every day, but met in their houses for the breaking of bread; they shared their food gladly and generously.

They praised God, and were looked up to by everyone.

Day by day the Lord added to their community those destined to be saved.

(Acts 2: 42-47)

So now we know what we have to do. It won’t be easy, but it will be transforming, alive, joyful, enriching, and life-giving.  We could go on, but it isn’t necessary.  God will do the same for us, if we let him.  There’s the rub, as Shakespeare would say.  We have to give ourselves to him generously, openly, courageously, and he will transform the world through us.  It is as simple as that.  Maybe not in our lifetime, maybe in years to come, but he will do it.

This Pentecost, which is on 27^th May this year, is an opportunity for us to give ourselves again to God, so that the fresh breath of the Spirit may blow on us again and wake us up from our stupor. Let’s start on the 18^th  May and say this prayer as a novena prayer each day.

Come Spirit, who is our light, shine among us;  warm and transform our hearts.

Come Spirit, who makes a home in us, change our way of thinking and acting

Come Spirit, our comforter and consoler, heal our woundedness, soothe our anxieties

Console all those who grieve and ache.

Come Spirit who energises us, keep us from the distraction of fleeting pleasures,

and lead us to moments of prayer and silence.

Come Spirit, consuming fire of love, fill us with enthusiasm for your vision,

That the desire for truth may be vibrant in us always.

Come Spirit, joy of our souls; teach us to dance your dance of love

among the wounded, the lost, the lonely.

Come Spirit, heart and centre of our world, warm the hearts of those grown cold,

and launch us into life!

Have a lovely Pentecost.  We will be praying for you.

Click on the picture for a song on the Holy Spirit