What is the action of the Holy Spirit in the lives of men?

VIVER como MARIA significa…

A ação do Espírito Santo nos homens

The life of the Church and of the Christian is a path of love: holy love, charity, towards the Supreme Love: God! The earth is a prelude and preparation for heaven: but the law of heaven is only Love. The Christian, therefore, as in a painful training ground, exercises here on earth in love:

“I give you a new commandment: that you love one another. As I have loved you, so also love one another (Jn 13,34).”

Love that strips away selfishness, that clothes man with the entrails of mercy and goodness. That spreads peace and joy. That bends over the needs of others, shares in their pain, heals wounds, points the way. That supports the faltering, accompanies the weak, forgets injustices, forgives offenses. Love that always loves, even when not loved, and makes life a gift. A service of one’s own energies, a holocaust of existence.

Este é o amor que Deus espalha com seu Espírito em nossos corações, por isso Paulo afirma:

“and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom 5, 5).

For this reason the Church on earth, still composed of sinners, never ceases to ask for the Spirit with unceasing groans and to communicate it through all the means with which Christ has enriched her: Word, Life, Sacraments.

É ele que unge os cristãos com crisma, como atletas no estádio.

É ele que transforma o pão no Corpo de Cristo e o vinho no seu Sangue.

É ele que consagra Bispos e Sacerdotes, tornando-os pastores do rebanho sob a sua guia.

É ele que funde indissoluvelmente o amor dos esposos com o seu fogo de Amor.

In the priestly hand that is raised to absolve, it is once again He, the Love of God, who descends to annul sin, to heal the fractures, to reopen for the sinful man the humble and fruitful path of a new flourishing of grace.

João nos lembra:

“and having said this, he breathed on them and said to them: Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them. And whose sins you retain are retained” (Jn 20,22-23).

This gesture and these words of Jesus have always been understood in the Church as the power to forgive sins with the sanctifying virtue of the Spirit.

Our life is entirely permeated by this immanent Love of God: the Spirit of Jesus. He prays unceasingly in us, even without us, and testifies before heaven that we are children of God.

Cirilo de Jerusalém (m. 386) escreve nas suas catequeses:

A single source irrigates the entire garden. A unique and identical dew spreads across all the earth, becoming white in the lily and red in the rose. In violets and hyacinths it takes on purple hues, and so forth, with different and varied colors according to the different types, but it is always the same dew…

Mary precedes the Church, even though she is the Church, of which she is the elected and loving Mother. The power of the Spirit that the Church continually invokes was unleashed, bursting forth in all its fullness, in Mary’s life. Her earthly existence and her current celestial presence are entirely marked by it. Even if not in a sensible way.

In truth, God is the industrious silence. Normally, He hides Himself in the mysterious flowering of creation, in the events of history, under the veils of infinite things, on the face of man and even more so on the face of His Christ: “Philip, whoever sees Me sees the Father” (Jn 14,9)! But His silence is always fruitful.

Even the life of Mary, precisely because it was immersed in God, was wrapped in silence. Rarely do human or celestial voices break it. In three moments the Spirit clearly descends upon her, to mark three ascensions, to open three dimensions of life: in the Immaculate Conception, in the Annunciation, at Pentecost: to make her a new creature, to make her Mother and Companion of Christ, to consecrate her Mother of the Church and of humanity.