Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Pentecost with hundreds of thousands of Catholics of different cultures, races and languages who have different ways of expressing and living their faith.
From the moment of Pentecost and throughout history, he said during a June 4 Mass in St. Peter's Square, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit "transforms confusion into communion."
The majority of people attending the Mass Pentecost morning were part of a gathering of at least 350,000 people who had filled St. Peter's Square and the broad boulevard leading to it the previous evening for a papal vigil with members of lay movements and communities.
At the vigil and Mass, Pope Benedict called on the movements to work together with each other and with the church to bring God's love to the world and to show modern men and women the beauty of a life lived for others.
"Human pride and selfishness always create divisions, raising walls of indifference, hatred and violence," he said at the Mass. "The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, makes hearts able to understand everyone's languages because it re-establishes the bridge of communication between earth and heaven. The Holy Spirit is love."
The Pentecost vigil, which lasted more than six hours, brought together members of Catholic charismatic groups, lay movements connected with religious orders, traditional parish-based organizations like the Legion of Mary, and new movements like Communion and Liberation, the Neocatechumenal Way, the Focolare movement, L'Arche, the Sant'Egidio Community, Cursillo and the Christian Life Communities.
In his long homily at the vigil, Pope Benedict focused more on the Holy Spirit than on the movements, although he praised the movements as schools for helping Catholics learn to live according to the Spirit and for sharing the Christian message with the world.
The pope said that in learning about the Holy Spirit people must first look at nature because the world is the work of the Spirit, the creative force of God.
While Pentecost is the feast of the church's birth, he said, it is also the "feast of creation."
"The world does not exist on its own; it comes from the creative spirit of God, the creative word of God," he said.
Recognizing that God created the world, he said, means "we cannot use and abuse the world and matter simply as material for our own actions and desires; we must consider creation to be a gift entrusted to us, not for destruction, but so that it would become the garden of God and, therefore, of humanity."
The pope said it is no accident that monasteries tend to be surrounded by gardens, because nature prospers where human hearts are in a correct relationship with God.
Unfortunately, he said, "over the course of human history, the good creation of God has been covered with a massive layer of dirt which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to see the reflection of the creator in it."
In Jesus, God became even more visible, taking on human form and living among people, the pope said. "Now we know the Creator-Spirit has a heart. He is love," he said.
Through Jesus' death and resurrection, the Holy Spirit brings life and freedom to all who follow him, Pope Benedict said.
Too many people today approach their life and their freedom like the prodigal son did when he asked his father for his inheritance so he could wander the world free of responsibility.
"In the end, he found himself taking care of pigs," the pope said. "When one wants only to control life, it becomes emptier, poorer."
The abundance of life and freedom, he said, is found in giving oneself to others, taking responsibility for one's actions, for the good of others and for the earth.
Pope Benedict asked the lay movements and communities to be schools of "this true freedom" and to learn to work with each other and the entire church to help others understand that everyone benefits from using their freedom for the common good. ---CNS |