In his morning homily at Casa Santa Marta, Pope Francis focused on a passage from the Acts of the Apostles, where he emphasized the Holy Spirit's ability to move the Church.
POPE FRANCIS
'The closure, the resistence to the Holy Spirit; the phrase that always closes and stops you: 'it's always done like that'. And this kills. This kills freedom, it kills joy, it kills the faithfulness to the Holy Spirit that always acts ahead, carrying forward the Church.â?
He said that the way to prevent this from happening is through discernment, and concluded by asking Christians to pray for such, so that not they may 'not to fall into immobility.â?
EXCERPTS FROM POPE'S HOMILY IN ENGLISH
SOURCE: VATICAN RADIO
'The Spirit is the gift of God, of this God, our Father who always surprises us. The God of surprisesâ?¦ Why? Because He is a living God, who dwells in us, a God who moves our hearts, a God who is in the Church and walks with us and in this journey He surprises us. It is he He who has the creativity to create the world, the creativity to create new thing every day. He is the God who surprises us.â?
'From the times of the prophets until now, the sin to resist the Holy Spirit had always been there: this resistance to the Spirit. This is the sin with which Stephen accuses the members of the Sanhedrin: 'You and your fathers have always resisted the Holy Spirit.â? No, it has always been done this way, and must be done so. They tell Peter not to bring these newness, to remain calmâ?¦ take a tranquilizer and calm the nervesâ?¦ be calm â?¦ so the voce of God is shut. In the psalm the Lord speaks to the people: 'Do not harden your hearts like your fathers.â?
The phrase, 'It is has always been done like thisâ? shuts and resists the Holy Spirit, and this kills freedom, kills joy, kills fidelity to the Holy Spirit who always acts in advance and carries the Church forward. But then the question - how can I know if it is from the Holy Spirit or from worldliness, the spirit of the world or spirit of the devil? For this, one needs to ask for the grace of discernment - the tool that the very Sprit has granted us. 'How should one discern in every occasion? The answer, the Pope said, is the way the apostles did it: they came together, talked and saw the path of the Holy Spirit. Instead, those without this grace or those who did not pray for it remained closed and still.â?
JC
