Church of Jesus Christ of the Universe

by Mauro

(translated audio)

18.05.2024

Vespers Mass on the Eve of Pentecost Sunday

Jl 3: 1-5; Psalm 103; Rm 8: 22-27; Jn 7: 37-39

We have reached the feast of Pentecost. For the Church, Easter Time comes to an end; we, on the other hand, want to live it up to the Holy Trinity, but, above all, we want to live it throughout the year. Easter Time encompasses all the events of salvation, brings the Incarnation of Jesus to fulfilment, and impels us to become children of God through all the gifts received during this time.

Pentecost is somehow always seen as the feast where the Holy Spirit distributes extraordinary gifts. I think, unfortunately, that the Holy Spirit is always seen present in a person when that person perhaps has locutions, visions or prophecies. But that is very limiting. This is a part of the gifts of the Spirit, but perhaps also the one we heard tonight, Saturday – the eve of Pentecost – from the prophet Joel. It is a part intended for everyone; it is part of a dimension in which everyone who walks towards God has these gifts: they are normality.

The Holy Spirit is the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. From sharing among us over the years, I think the Third Person is the most difficult to understand. We all know that He is the love of the Father, the love of the Son; but then somehow He is seen in the form of a dove. It is difficult to frame Him, to place Him. I think the simplest way is to see Him precisely in his primary function: He is the one who unites, He unites the Father to the Son, He unites us to the Father and the Son, He unites believers. He is love; He is – in a certain sense – the action of the Trinitarian vortex, the primary energy, even if it is not just Him (we will see that later), but perhaps this can help us to understand Him better.

The Holy Spirit is present in everyone, no one can say to not have Him. If we did not have the Holy Spirit, we would not even be able to say “Father”¹, we would not be able to speak, to listen, to see. He is present in all the sacraments. Even in the consecration of the Eucharist we invoke the Holy Spirit: “Send your Spirit”. He is present everywhere; when we anoint. We consecrate everything and always in the name of the Holy Spirit.

He is the first gift Jesus gives us: «It is good for you that I go because the Spirit will come»². He is the first gift. What is He then? He is the completeness of the Trinitarian action. Even redemption was not accomplished – in a certain sense – by Jesus alone. It was the action of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, each in their own specificity: the Father who creates and sends the Son, the Son who offers Himself up to the cross, to death on a cross, but if He did not give us the Holy Spirit, we would not even know how to understand the action of redemption, we would not know how to understand anything. Hence, redemption is a Trinitarian action.

Everything starts from the Father to return to the Father; but everything happens only through the Son in the Holy Spirit. How many times does Jesus say: «Without me you can do nothing»³. But without the Holy Spirit explaining to us what He has done and what we must do, we could do nothing. So, to relegate Him to “He is who gives you the locutions” is really limiting.

What we are describing is the Trinitarian vortex⁴, that vortex that is always in action. What we have described is communion; one of our three pillars: offering our life, communion and integrity. Without the living presence of the Holy Spirit, it is impossible to live in communion. Just as it is impossible without the desire to offer and lose one’s life, to lose one’s thought; and it is impossible if we do not try to live integrity.

None of the Three – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – can do it alone. We have to reflect on this: how can we think we can do it alone? The Son does what He sees the Father do⁵, says what He hears the Father say⁶, the Holy Spirit confirms what Jesus does and says, and leads us through Jesus to the Father. Not even the Trinity exists alone. Of course, the Father is infinite, He creates, but if we then want all that He has created to return to Him, He needs the Son and the Holy Spirit. I am talking about the Trinity!, and nevertheless sometimes we presume to do it ourselves.

It is important: we can do nothing without Jesus, but we can also do nothing without our brothers and sisters; we can do nothing if not in the Church, we can do nothing if not in the Mystical Body, that will be brought to the Father by Jesus in the Holy Spirit; Jesus who ultimately presents it to the Father in the Holy Spirit. We all take part there.

We know that this Trinitarian action at this time is at work more than ever; the Trinitarian action is empowered. The Father has given all power to the Son, and we have entered into the Cosmic Pentecost, that Pentecost that is silent but more powerful than the one we celebrate tomorrow in remembrance of the first Pentecost, because the Holy Spirit awakens in the children of God the call, the mission, the identity, and is united with the mission of the Church throughout the ages. So, this action is at its peak.

We see the action of the satanic vortex at its maximum, that is visible: the wickedness, the horrible things that happen, but those are a consequence of this action of God that goes on strong. And Lucifer is forced to play his last cards, because by gambling everything as he does now, he will go directly to his defeat. He is forced, he would gladly do without, but he knows he has no more time, and if he does not try this way, he also knows he will lose.

So, it is true that the Holy Spirit gives extraordinary gifts, it is undeniable. If we really look at what counts, the true gifts, His seven gifts – where there is nothing extraordinary (wisdom, intelligence, fear of God; let us meditate on them one by one) – could all be summarised by what He does with them. He brings us to the whole truth⁷. This is the true and profound action of the Holy Spirit.

All those gifts, His seven gifts, if received and lived by so many men – who would become children of God –, would be that normality to rewrite history and to have the new creation already now: science, wisdom, intellect, knowledge, how different it would be! Think about all the functions in medicine, work, etc. having the gifts of the Holy Spirit. How differently the doctors, the scientists, the parents, the professors would work; how different the everyday work, life, would be. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are gifts not for the extraordinary, but for living the ordinary according to God’s thoughts.

This is the action of the Holy Spirit which is the whole truth: we are children of God. He is the truth of life, He is the truth about man’s creation, the truth about creation. Man is groping, he is testing and through that he is trying to understand. With the gifts of the Holy Spirit it would be clear; it would be clear why this or that happens; that illness would be clear, everything would be clear with the seven gifts. It is the truth also about Love, with a capital letter.

If you look, however, at the action we have in the world – which is the action, instead, of the prince of this world and his disintegrating energy – everything has been soiled: our science is limited, wisdom is limited, love is something that has nothing to do with love, work enslaves us, technology enslaves us. Instead of leading us to freedom and the whole truth it leads us to understand nothing and be enslaved. It leads us to be enslaved by what comes from outside, instead of being enabled to lead by what comes from within us, through the action of the Holy Spirit. It is no longer man who leads. Nowadays, we have the danger of artificial intelligence that machines will come to lead us. And we can clearly see this clash between the Holy Spirit and the other spirit that incarnates and becomes something real. Unfortunately, in the Gospel we read: «The people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light»⁸. They are quick to complete their tasks, they hurry, whereas we take our time.

The Holy Spirit reveals to us the whole truth about the Face of God, revealed by Jesus. And through the Holy Spirit we understand the Father, we know Him – because Jesus revealed Him, yes –; but in the end if we do not have the Holy Spirit we do not understand anything. In fact, Jesus opened the minds to the apostles so that they could understand the scriptures⁹. And so it is for us. Then, guided by the Holy Spirit with his seven gifts, what we would really understand is the meaning of life, what we would really understand is our body; we would really understand the direction of our thinking, we would understand God’s thinking; we would understand how everything works, every law, both physical and human. We would understand who we are. Then, the action of the Holy Spirit, as well as revealing God to us, reveals ourselves, ourselves in the mind of God. These are the gifts, the real ones and they are more real than the extraordinary ones; the extraordinary ones must promote this, otherwise they are of no use, otherwise they become esoteric.

You see that the Holy Spirit, as we said at the beginning, can seem something abstract, just as we always remain a bit in a mystery when we speak of “the laws of the Spirit” or of “immersing ourselves in the Spirit”. Instead, you see that it is something very concrete, the most concrete thing there is, because without Him nothing would exist. Without Him we would not be able to live, to incarnate, to become children of God. But we have the grace which is the first gift that Jesus gave us. Therefore, no one can say that he does not have the Holy Spirit. We all have Him, we have that flame that keeps us alive and that, depending on our response, can burn away our whole body, our impurities, all our thoughts and immerse us in the thinking of God, depending on how much we participate. But everybody has the Holy Spirit. He is a gift, we can only reject Him, but we really have to be clear and say: “I do not want Him”. Many times we reject Him because we know what the right thing is and do, however, that other thing. Then we are rejecting the Holy Spirit to satisfy our needs.

We know that everything originates from the mind of God, everything originates from the Spirit, from His love, but everything must become incarnate and very concrete. You see that when we say that there is nothing that exists unless it first existed in the spirit, that is real, irrefutable. No one can deny it, not even those who do not believe: they cannot explain it, but they cannot deny it either. The redemption of Jesus – which was an idea of the Father, a thought of the Father – has precisely made it possible to restore the relationship between us and the Father through the Holy Spirit in the right way. Without Jesus Christ, we could not return to live in this dimension; by accepting Christ and to the extent that we accept Him, accept his forgiveness, accept his love, allow ourselves to be transformed, we are given the Holy Spirit who brings us back into the dimension with the Father. It is always a Trinitarian action. It is Mary Most Holy, in the Trinity, interceding, generating as Mother.

I think this is beautiful to see. This is something that gives us peace, that does not give us anxieties, that does not frighten us, beyond what happens around us. The Holy Spirit guides us to know Life, with a capital letter, through Jesus, and while we know the Father, we know the Son and we know the Holy Spirit, we know ourselves. In that knowledge we know the spirit of evil, in that knowledge we see the events and know how to govern them. And what is this, if not His seven gifts?

That is more than having a gift of performing miracles, it is much more. It is knowing the truth, it is knowing reality, it is knowing God’s mind, it is the desire to participate in them. It is much more! It is much more than the ability to do miracles. We can do all the miracles in the world but when we die, if we have not come to this knowledge, where do we go? “I have performed miracles in your name”. “I do not know you” He answers, “We did not meet, we did not fall in love during our lives. You may have performed miracles, but I do not know you. Away from me, worker of iniquity”. It is Gospel¹⁰.

If we do not use this life to know and love us – and this is a gift of the Holy Spirit – we throw it away. We can save all the Africans, all the Chinese, convert all the Japanese: if we do not meet God in this way, He does not know us. It is only in this way that everything is revealed in the right light, and how many wrong lights there are, how many false prophets!

Look, just in the case it would be necessary: where is it really rooted to be Christian or not to be Christian, to be on the right or the wrong side, to belong to Christ or not? It does not depend on whether the Pope tells us, but on whether we seek the Trinity. There are few things that are heresy: it is denying the Trinity and we deny the Trinity when we do not wish to know Her also. It is not enough to say, “Yes, yes, I believe it” and if we believe it, we must live accordingly. Heresy is denying the incarnation and the resurrection. Heresy is only present in these case, everything else the Pope invented, but let him live with it!

The Holy Spirit is not limited to the gift of miracles, of tongues, it is much more. I really desire Him for myself, I desire Him for us, to welcome Him, to really let Him be free. And the only way to welcome Him is, again, to offer our lives to Jesus, through Mary, because the Holy Spirit is given to us by Jesus. Here again, the Three of the Holy Trinity are so united that it is impossible to desire the Holy Spirit without asking Jesus for Him. If Jesus does not give Him to us, we do not receive Him, even if we pray a lot to receive Him. We take another spirit but not the Holy Spirit. We have to go through the Son to get to the Father, we cannot stop at the Son; if we stop at the Son it is no use¹¹.

This is the mystery that is light, that is joy, that is where Mary Most Holy introduces us; She is the only one who takes us there. What She does is taking us to Jesus, because we start from Jesus. We are created, we have a soul, we exist. She takes us to Jesus, Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit and sends us back to Mary, who is the Bride and forms us and makes us grow, but it is always a Trinitarian gift. To welcome the Holy Spirit once again means to desire Him and to ask Jesus for Him, through Mary, offering Him our life.

It means once again (I will be a nuisance to you) to have understood that what counts in this life is to know the Father, to know the Father and He who sent: the Son¹²; knowing them we know the Holy Spirit, but, above all, what gives us joy? We begin to see clear, we understand reality. We begin to understand that we are children of God, that to be a child of God is not something “Yes once, perhaps”, no, I am a child of God today. I can today, as Jesus said in the Gospel, be one with Him¹³, allow the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit to dwell in me. I can have the Trinity within me, I can speak, I can act. Then, the miracles will happen, but it is not the gift of performing miracles, it is the gift of being children of God; it is the gift of having understood what it is to be a Christian, belonging to Christ. The Holy Spirit is in this vortex.

And so, I pray again to Mary Most Holy, the Bride of the Holy Spirit, to welcome into her Heart each one of us, to welcome the last, the little ones, the simple ones; to welcome those who do not make so many calculations, thoughts, reasoning, but who feel within themselves what the path is, who know what life is and, in that life, allow themselves to be used beyond what they know and what they do not know. May all the despairing, all the unhappy, all the Purgatory that does not fully welcome the gift of the Holy Spirit and remains there to let pass the time, to purge. May the Holy Spirit, truly, through Mary’s intercession, today also free Purgatory, may descend upon all those who said yes to God at the moment of conception and reawaken them, and may the Earth truly, through God’s children and his Church, be renewed, become what it is in God’s mind, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.