Church of Jesus Christ of the Universe

by Mauro

(translated audio)

07.06.2025

Pentecost Sunday – Vigil Mass
Year C – Solemnity
Readings: Joel 3:1-5; Ps 33; Rom 8:22-27; Jn 7:37-39

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

May the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Introduction and Forgiveness

We have come to this vigil. I wish, for each of you, for each of you in your priesthood to do this for the sake of humanity. I wish that we see each other in the Amphitheatre[1], we see each other in the mind of Mary, that we see each other on the eve of this event, because it will be an event this year, gathered in the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in her mind. I repeat, with all those souls, all those realities, all those passages, all those transformations that are related to each one of us, ready to offer life, to let Mary generate the Son of God in us; as She generated Him in the Holy Spirit, She must generate Him in each one of us. And then really be that light, that witness that renews the face of the Earth.

Renewing the face of the Earth does not mean that we have to do great things: we have to allow God to do the great things through us; He is the one who does the great things.

It would be nice, and I will try to understand a little of this action of God’s mind who is thinking of us, generating us, giving us to Mary and Mary who is taking us to the Son, generating the Son in us, and doing it in the Holy Spirit. Jesus, who then, in the Holy Spirit, takes us to the Father. To understand a little of this action of the Holy Spirit, which I think is very confused in the minds of Christians.

Let us try to enter through Mary’s mind. Without Mary we would not be able to do anything, Mary always generates Jesus, without Jesus we would not be able to do anything. It is always such an action. Let us set Him free in this hour, to set him free always.

Let us get ready.

I ask you, O Mother, to present each of us, to present your Church through your Heart in this vigil mass, just as you did at the first vigil in Jerusalem. The disciples and apostles were gathered around you and your Bridegroom descended upon you, descended upon all of them and brought the whole truth.

O Mother, present us to the Father through your Heart. May the Father’s forgiveness descend upon us, upon all our interpretations of the Holy Spirit; descend upon us, upon all the shortcomings we have made toward the Holy Spirit; descend to renew within us the whole path we have made difficult, tortuous, because we do not follow the impulses of the Holy Spirit. However, may we perceive this forgiveness of the Father as complete, may it leave no bitterness, may we not limit ourselves to seeing that ‘we have done wrong’, but may we contemplate the love of God, who does not look at our mistakes, but already sees us in his new thinking, in the New Creation, and that forgiveness is precisely that: freeing us to enter into life.

May your love, O Father, descend once more upon this Church, upon humanity, upon all men and women of good will; may it descend upon the little ones, the least among us, upon those who are most forgotten; may it descend on those who, without knowing and without knowing you, are fully immersed in your will. May your love also reach creation, may it open in us true understanding, true wisdom, true knowledge, which lead us to know you, which lead us to know the Son, which lead us to know the Holy Spirit, and which also lead us to know Mary Most Holy as well. May your forgiveness descend upon the sick, the dying, and may it heal all those who are ready and willing to be healed, in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Homily

We are dressed in white and not red, as we will be tomorrow, precisely because of what I said earlier: to be with Mary. We try to be in Mary’s Heart, in her mind.

I said that this Pentecost is not like the others, it is not like the others in God’s mind, it is not like the others in God’s action. Its full unfolding, its witness to the Holy Spirit, witness to Jesus, witness to the Father depends on us, on our response. But this Pentecost is not like the others. We have prayed a novena for the Lord to make His Church more and more visible, and He will; however, you must understand that this depends on the response of each of us, because we are His Church. I know that He will do His part because He is faithful.

Pentecost: but what is the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity? The love of the Father descending on the Son, the love of the Son descending to the Father, yes, but what is He? He is a Person first and foremost, and just as we have a relationship with Mary Most Holy, who helps us to have a relationship with Jesus Christ, who helps us to have a relationship with God the Father, we must learn to have a relationship with the Person Holy Spirit, real, concrete, an exchange.

He is the first gift Jesus gives us. The glorification of Jesus, His redemption, His Cross, and as the first gift He gives us the Holy Spirit. He gives us a Person with whom we can talk, exchange, share, understand; a Person who then is the Comforter, with all his gifts. Before Jesus there were many prophets, Abraham, the patriarchs. All were guided by God, but they did not have the Holy Spirit. They were guided through St. Michael, St. Raphael, the archangels, the angels. Without the passage of Jesus, no one can receive the Holy Spirit.

We read recently in the Acts of the Apostles, also St. Paul meeting disciples and saying, “But which baptism did you receive? In the Holy Spirit?” “We never even knew there was the Holy Spirit. We received the Baptism of John.”[2] And then, he baptizes them. It happens to Peter that the Holy Spirit descends on the Gentiles. He says, “Who am I to deny that He has descended as He has descended on us?”[3] .

The first thing we need to understand clearly are these passages which are not self-evident: when we accept Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit comes; when we do not accept Jesus Christ, we do not have the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ is the only one who can enter our inner sanctuary, He is the only one who has the key. It is Him. His job, as the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, is to open that door, is to set us free, is to make us free from our thoughts, from original sin, from ourselves; is to free us, is to heal us. But the One who brings us to the whole truth, to know the Father, to become a child of God, is the Holy Spirit. So, when we accept Jesus in order to experience redemption, Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit, who starts the process of transformation and then brings us back to Jesus and Jesus brings us to the Father in the Holy Spirit. Do not see this as something technical, this is very concrete.

We know that He is the giver of the seven gifts. Instead, I think that Christians have always seen Him as the giver of the charisms, but He has nothing to do with the charisms. He brings the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are not the charisms. We see that later.

The Holy Spirit is the Father’s tenderness, He is the One who guides us through the whole transformation of our life, through all our limitations that have been opened, our sins that have been forgiven, the situations in our life that have been redeemed, so that we no longer have a reason to remain bound there, because the Holy Spirit guides us to transformation, to the whole truth, but the truth of God. Let us not confuse the truth of the world or think of its gifts – wisdom, understanding, knowledge… – according to the world. They have nothing to do with the world. The wisdom that the Holy Spirit gives us is to know God; knowledge is that which is in God, understanding that which is in God, life is according to God. So, when we classify them according to the world, we are standing on the opposite side.

He is the Comforter. But how does He console us? I think most of all He consoles those who have met Jesus Christ, who have felt liberated, who have seen Him, who have wanted Him, who desire Him, and who can no longer find Him, because Jesus Christ returned to the Father. He comforts us in the absence of Christ. I hope it is clear what I mean. He comforts us over the fact that Jesus returned to the Father. To the Apostles He says, “Do not weep, it is better for you that I go away, for I will give you the Comforter.”[4] That is as it is today as well. I say: He comforts us from the Communion we will receive this evening to the Communion we will receive tomorrow evening; He comforts us for twenty-four hours until we receive Jesus another time. But He does not comfort us with caresses, but by revealing the whole truth to us.

He comforts us in our labours, because, let us be honest – at least for me it is like this – following Christ is the only thing we can do, it is the most beautiful thing there is, but we struggle, it is tiring. He comforts us of the labours; He comes to bring us the gentleness and tenderness of the Father. He lets us taste the things of heaven, which give us the courage and strength to continue in the world down here. It is the Holy Spirit, He is love, that love which becomes alive and concrete, which not only flows between the Father and the Son, but which we feel when we live a relationship with Him; that love that explains to us what love is, not according to the world; that love which leads us to the transformation of our way of thinking of who love and what love is: that is the Holy Spirit.

The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are, as I said, all related to the knowledge of life in God. Charisms can be the power to do miracles, to speak in tongues, add anything else you can think of, but they are not the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In fact, charisms existed even before, among the earlier prophets; they existed before Jesus, whereas the Holy Spirit only came after Jesus.

So, to begin this journey of true knowledge, Jesus had to free us from original sin. Whenever we choose Jesus – and do not say, I chose Him once and forever – whenever we choose Him in those difficult passages of our life where original sin is still… still has its action, where original sin still manages to keep us enslaved, to bind us to the world, we choose Jesus, then, by this decision, He opens us again, He frees us again and gives us the Holy Spirit. Then the journey of resurrection and transformation begins, or let us call it healing. From what? From ourselves: healing of the soul, healing of the faculties of the soul – intellect, memory, will[5] – which are always and still subject to the dominion of the spirit of the world; even after being liberated they run the risk of relapsing. And again, Jesus frees us, seventy times seven He frees us through forgiveness, giving us strength, giving us the Holy Spirit.

And there part those words, “the truth will set you free”[6], “the Holy Spirit will give you the whole truth”[7], because He will be the one who will help us understand Jesus’ words, help us understand Jesus’ action. He will help us understand our action where we did not reach with our way of thinking. Everything always with gentleness, because He is love. It will never be an action that violently points the finger at us, but rather an action of Jesus-Holy Spirit; we could also put Mary in the first place: Mary-Jesus-Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit simply helps us understand the path to take; He opens the way for us. That is the whole truth: our way, our truth, our identity. He shows us the gifts the Father gave us, the gifts Jesus gave us, the gifts we have around us. He shows us all the gifts and makes us feel His presence. It is He who makes us feel the Church, all those who are immersed in the Holy Spirit, it is a gift that makes us feel body, the Mystical Body. And there the real transformation of thinking takes place, only in Him, otherwise we transform our thinking from a human thought into a more sublime thought, but still human, wiser according to human wisdom, consisting more of concepts and theories, but without the Holy Spirit. It is another transformation. The Holy Spirit transforms us into children of God.

We know that sin against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. I think that everyone, at least I, when I hear that, says: For heaven’s sake, what is that? What is this sin? I think you have the maturity – and do not call me a heretic – to understand that those sins are not the ones we have perhaps always fought against, however wrong they may have been; they are not our limitations, our weaknesses, our shortcomings, they are not our efforts that make us more or less ugly. That is not the sin against the Holy Spirit; that sin is forgiven, always, you just have to ask for it. We heard that also in the first reading, and also St. Paul says that it is enough to call on the name of the Lord. The sin, the one… that leads to not being forgiven, not so much while we are committing it, but because instead of rising up, we start to descend, deeper and deeper, and it will not be forgiven because we are running toward hell instead of toward Heaven. This sin is rebellion. Rebellion against whom? Against God’s gifts, against accepting God’s gifts, against accepting God’s help, against accepting all the possibilities God gives us, against accepting the Lord who in every way tries to elevate us, persisting in our thinking, persisting in that rejection and rejecting God’s help. How can this be forgiven? We reject it. It means not accepting the hand that God extends to us, as Peter did when he was drowning[8]. If we do not accept this hand, we are not forgiven. It is not Him who does not forgive us, it is we who do not want to be forgiven, it is we who want to stay there.

It is rejecting the path He opens for us, because we do not listen to His voice. Doing so is a sin against the Holy Spirit, so they say, but this sin begins in not welcoming Jesus Christ. Then, as a consequence, we do not have the Holy Spirit and so we continue with all the sins. However, watch out because there are many ways of not welcoming Jesus: when we do not want to get to know Him, when we just want Him in our lives so that He can help us how and when we want Him to, when Jesus has to follow us, not us following Jesus. It has to be Him doing miracles to make things go the way we want them to. How many nuances! To put our self and our thinking at the centre, our intuitions, already means moving towards this sin.

Instead, if we know that Jesus is sent by the Father, recognizing that He knows the Way, that He is the Way, the Truth and the Life, asking for help, then what I said earlier begins: He opens the way for us, gives us the Holy Spirit and leads us to the whole truth.

[1] This refers to the Amphitheatre of our House-Sanctuary “The Face of Mary” in Medjugorje.

[2] See Acts 19: 1-6

[3] See Acts 10: 44-48

[4] Cf. Jn 16:5-7

[5] See “Beyond the Great Barrier”, ch. 13, pp. 246-247.

[6] See Jn 8: 31-32

[7] See Jn 16: 13

[8] See Mt 14: 28-31