In his homily at Casa Santa Marta, Pope Francis spoke about the Holy Spirit, who is the assurance for Christians to remain in God's presence.
The pope recalled a recent video he saw of people celebrating the arrival of the new year, 2020.
POPE FRANCIS
“They celebrated the New Year with a terrible worldliness, wasting money and many things. The spirit of the world. 'Is this a sin?' - 'No dear: this is corruption, worse than sin.'”
He reminded that the Holy Spirit leads to God. Thus, if one sins the Holy Spirit helps one begin again. Meanwhile,the spirit of the world corrupts, so one can't distinguish between good and evil.
SUMMARY OF PAPAL HOMILY
(Source: Vatican News)
They celebrated the New Year with a terrible worldliness, wasting money and many things. The spirit of the world. 'Is this a sin?' - 'No dear: this is corruption, worse than sin.' The Holy Spirit leads you to God, and if you sin, the Holy Spirit protects you and helps you to rise up, but the spirit of the world leads you to corruption, to the point that you do not know what is good and what is evil: everything is the same.
The Apostle John gives us this advice: 'Dear friends, do not give faith to every spirit (i.e. to every feeling, every inspiration, every idea), but test the spirits, to test whether they really come from God (or from the world)'. But what does it mean to test the Spirit? It is simply this: when you feel something, you feel like doing something, or you come up with an idea, a judgment of something, ask yourself: is this what I feel from the Spirit of God or from the spirit of the world?
For this reason I recommend that you take some time every day before going to bed or at noon - when you want to - [and ask yourself]: what has happened in my heart today? What did I want to do, to think? What is the spirit that has moved in my heart? The Spirit of God, the gift of God, the Holy Spirit who always brings me forward to the encounter with the Lord or the spirit of the world who gently, slowly moves me away from the Lord; it is a slow, slow, slow slide.
Melissa Butz
