Franciscan General Chapter, May 30, 2009

We began our celebration with the symbol of light singing: "Accende lumen sensibus, infonde amorem cordibus" (Ignite light in our senses, infuse love in our hearts). In Sacred Scripture the Holy Spirit never proclaims his own name, but always that of the Father or the Son. He does not teach us to say: Ruach, which is his name, but Abba, Father, and Maranatha, Lord Jesus! The Spirit reveals himself by revealing other persons. Unknown, he is the one who makes all things known. The Holy Spirit is thus light: light in the sense that he illuminates things, remaining hidden himself. But it is by doing this that he shows us who he is. Saint Basil the Great explains him on the basis of the profound observation that what is the cause of the seeing, is seen together with what is seen. Showing us the Son - who is the image of God and the splendour of his glory - the Paraclete reveals himself (Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit, XVI 64 PG 32, 185). The illumination of the Spirit, then, allows us once more this evening to have a living experience of Christ, light of lights, splendour of the Father (cf. Opening prayer), and to welcome together with the Father and the Son the same and life-giving Spirit. The illumination of the Spirit allows us thus to have a living experience of the Triune God.

And it is in this light that we have listened to and thankfully received the Word of God which we have proclaimed. A word that illuminates once more our life and helps us to enter into the depths of the mystery that we are celebrating with all the Church, making us understand what the Holy Spirit works in the life of the world and of believers. Let us go briefly through the texts we have proclaimed.

The day of Babel signified for humanity the disaster of division because of an inability to communicate. The day of Pentecost restores the joyous possibility of dialogue rediscovered through the redeeming power of the sacrifice of Jesus. He died, not for any one nation, but to gather all the scattered children of God. Thus, as we have prayed, the earth can become a single family and each language can proclaim that Jesus is Lord (cf. Prayer in the first reading). Welcoming the gift of the Spirit we are therefore called to become instruments and signs of unity.

At the foot of Mount Sinai, God chose a people for himself. He always makes choices. He preferred the poor to speak of his love; he chose disciples to make them witnesses of the resurrection. But in turn, the chosen one of God is also forced to make choices: the events of which he is a witness are not just news items: they engage him directly. He who has been liberated, in turn feels called to be a liberator. The fire of Sinai is the same fire in the Upper Room. A new people is born and called to make known the salvation and liberation that Christ has brought. That is who we become when we receive the gift of the Spirit.

The Spirit whom we invoke, because he still descends abundantly on all of us, is the Spirit of the Lord who gives life. The vision of Ezechiel is very eloquent in this regard. The desert of the dry, desiccated bones, brought to life by the Word of God and by his Spirit, becomes the symbol of an Israel without hope, to whom God promises survival and liberation. The new life that the Holy Spirit gives continually to his Church is the continual resurrection that transforms our life and makes us capable of hope within the many situations of death.

At Jerusalem, on the day of Pentecost, the disciples announced in various languages the great works of God and all understood the message of salvation. What the prophet Joel predicted, came about: an entire people capable of prophesying. The Spirit renders us witnesses and prophets.

That is what the Holy Spirit achieves in us, bring to completion the whole history of salvation. The Holy Spirit, as the Fourth Eucharistic Prayer affirms, is in fact the one who helps us to live no longer for ourselves and perfects the work of God in the world by completing every sanctification. The apostle Paul has reminded us that the Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness. He it is who prays in us, and he it is who gives us to understand the mysteries of the kingdom of God, he it is who brings us into intimacy with God.

Let us make our own the cry of Jesus that resounds strongly for us this evening: "Let all who are thirsty come to me and drink. Let those who believe in me come follow me." As Scripture says: "from his breast will come forth rivers of living water." It is the call to quench our thirst from the gushing stream that is the Holy Spirit, gift of the Risen Christ. It is in Christ that our life has sense. Whoever experiences the Spirit, this living water, this spring eternally pouring forth life, encounters Christ and is also called to make known to others that Christ alone is the freely given love which satisfies the human heart. When the human heart hosts the Holy Spirit, when he makes his home within us, life changes. Our mentality changes, our way of thinking and acting: we live no longer for ourselves, but we live in gift and forgiveness. We live from the Risen One. Thus Easter is completed in our lives and not just in liturgical time.

The words of Pope Paul VI in an audience of 29th November 1972 seem to me more relevant than ever: "What do we feel our blessed Church needs, what do we think she needs above all?" We Friars Minor, gathered at the Portiuncula for our General Chapter, could add: "What do we feel our universal fraternity needs?" Paul VI gives a response that we too could make our own: "We feel the need for the Holy Spirit, animator and sanctifier of the Church, her divine breath, the wind that fills her sails, her unifying principal, her interior spring of light and force, her support and consolation, the source of her charisms and of her songs, her peace and her joy ... the Church has need of a perennial Pentecost: has need of fire in her heart, of words on her lips, of prophecy in her vision ... The Church has need of feeling the wave of love flowing through all her human faculties, of that love that is called charity, and which is precisely propagated in our hearts by the Holy Spirit."