VATICAN CITY. Not only the Our Father and the Hail Mary: Pope Francis exhorts the faithful to “invoke the Holy Spirit more often”, with a “spontaneous” prayer, which “must come from the heart”, especially when in difficulty, in darkness, in the dark, you do not know what to do or you are about to fall, and it can be concentrated in a single invocation: “Come, Holy Spirit”.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio concluded yesterday, November 10, 2021, a cycle of catechesis which, from Wednesday to Wednesday, he dedicated to the letter of St. Paul to the Galatians. The Apostle, he stressed, “reminds us that we cannot afford any weariness in doing good. We must trust that the Spirit always comes to help our weakness and gives us the support we need. So let’s learn to invoke the Holy Spirit more often! “And, Father, how the Holy Spirit is invoked” “, Francis continued, imagining the objection of a surprised believer,” “because I know how to pray to the Father, with our Father, I know how to pray to Our Lady, with the Hail Mary, I know how to pray to Jesus with the prayer of the wounds, but what is the prayer of the Holy Spirit? ”. The prayer of the Holy Spirit – the Pope explained – is spontaneous, it must come from the heart, you must ask in moments of difficulty, Holy spirit come! The key word is this: come, come! But – he continued, addressing the faithful imaginary interlocutor – you have to say it, with your language, with your words: come because I am in difficulty, in the darkness, in the dark, come because I do not know what to do, come because I am about to fall , come, come: it is the word of the Spirit, to call the Spirit. We learn to call on the Holy Ghost more often. We can do it with simple words, at various times of the day. And we can take with us, perhaps in our pocket Gospel, the beautiful prayer that the Church recites at Pentecost: “Come, Holy Spirit, / send us from heaven / a ray of your light! / Come, father of the poor, / come, giver of gifts, / come, light of hearts! / Perfect comforter, / sweet guest of the soul / sweetest relief … “. And so he goes on, it’s a beautiful prayer. But – Francis continued – if you do not have prayer, you are unable to find it, the core of prayer is: come! The core of the prayer is “come”, so Our Lady and the Apostles prayed after Jesus had ascended into Heaven; they were alone in the Upper Room and invoked the Spirit. It will do us good to pray often: Come, Holy Spirit. And with the presence of the Spirit we safeguard freedom. We will be free, free Christians, not attached to the past in the negative sense of the word, not chained to practices, but free from Christian freedom, the one that makes us mature. This prayer will help us to walk in the Spirit, in freedom and in joy, because when the Holy Spirit comes, joy comes, true joy. The Lord bless you ».
Saint Paul, the Pope pointed out, “was aware of the risks that Christian freedom brings but did not minimize the consequences. He reiterated with parrhesia to believers, that is with courage, that freedom is not at all equivalent to libertinage, nor does it lead to forms of presumptuous self-sufficiency. On the contrary, Paul placed freedom in the shadow of love and established its consistent exercise in the service of charity. All this vision has been placed on the horizon of life according to the Holy Spirit, who fulfills the Law given by God to Israel and prevents them from falling back into the slavery of sin. But always – Francis remarked – the temptation is to go back: a definition of Christians that is in writing says that we Christians are not people who go back, who go back: a beautiful definition. And the temptation is to go back to be safer, to go back only to the law neglecting the new life of the spirit. This is what Paul teaches us: the true law has its fullness in this life of the Spirit that Jesus gave us and this life of the Spirit alone can be lived in freedom, Christian freedom. And this is one of the most beautiful, most beautiful things ».
For this reason, following Saint Augustine, the Pope indicated the example of the Gospel episode of the storm on the lake: «In moments of difficulty, says Saint Augustine, we are as in the boat in the moment of the storm. And what did the Apostles do? They woke Christ who was sleeping while there was a storm; but He was present. The only thing we can do in bad times is to “wake up” Christ who is within us, but “sleeps” as in the boat. That’s it. We must awaken Christ in our hearts and only then will we be able to contemplate things with his gaze, because he sees beyond the storm. Through that serene gaze of his, we can see a panorama that, alone, it is not even conceivable to see ».
At the end of the audience, the Pope greeted the faithful from Poland – a country at the center of the news at the moment for refugees rejected on the border with Belarus – recalling that today Poland is the national holiday of independence. “Thanking the Lord for the gift of freedom, let us remember that – as Saint John Paul II said -” this freedom must be managed on the basis of love of God, country and brothers “(13.11.2002). “Today the world and Poland need men with a big heart, who serve with humility and love, who bless and do not curse, who conquer the land with blessing” (Sopot, 5.06.1999) ».
Francesco also greeted the representatives of the Penitentiary Police, the Fire Brigade and other trade unions in the Italian Security and Defense sector, hoping that their profession “is understood as a” mission “, to be carried out with competence and moral responsibility”.
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