At the general audience this May 29, 2024, Pope Francis started a new catechesis series on the Holy Spirit and the Bride — “the Bride is the Church” — saying that we will journey “through the three great stages of salvation history: the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the time of the Church. Always keeping our gaze fixed on Jesus, Who is our hope.”
The Pope said the first section, on the Old Testament, will be to “discover that what is given as a promise in the Old Testament has been fully realized in Christ. It will be like following the path of the sun from dawn to noon.”
With that, he began with the first two verses of the Bible, from Genesis.
The Spirit of God appears to us here as the mysterious power that moves the world from its initial formless, deserted, and gloomy state to its ordered and harmonious state. Because the Spirit makes harmony, harmony in life, harmony in the world. In other words, it is He who makes the world pass from chaos to the cosmos, that is, from confusion to something beautiful and ordered.
A universe that groans
Moving then through the Psalms and the Gospels, the Pope notes how St. Paul further looks at the relationship between the Holy Spirit and creation:
He speaks of a universe that ‘groans and suffers as in labor pains’ (cf. Rom 8:22). It suffers because of man who has subjected it to the ‘bondage of corruption’ (cf. vv. 20-21). It is a reality that concerns us closely and concerns us dramatically. The Apostle sees the cause of the suffering of creation in the corruption and sin of humanity that has dragged it into its alienation from God. This remains as true today as it was then. We see the havoc that has been done, and that continues to be wrought upon creation by humanity, especially that part of it that has greater capacity to exploit its resources.
But the way to return to “the harmony of the Spirit” is shown, the Pope said, by his namesake, St. Francis of Assisi: through “the way of contemplation and praise.”
One of the psalms (18:2 [19:1]) says, ‘The heavens declare the glory of God,’ but men and women are needed to give voice to this mute cry of theirs. And in the ‘Sanctus’ of the Mass we repeat each time: ‘Heaven and earth are full of your glory.’ They are, so to speak, ‘pregnant’ with it, but they need the hands of a good midwife to give birth to this praise of theirs. Our vocation in the world, Paul again reminds us, is to be ‘praise of His glory’ (Eph 1:12). It is to put the joy of contemplating ahead of the joy of possessing.
In the cosmos, and in us
The same work of transforming chaos into cosmos is the work the Holy Spirit does in us, the Pope continued.
[O]ur heart resembles that deserted, dark abyss of the first verses of Genesis. Opposed feelings and desires stir within it: those of the flesh and those of the spirit. […] Brothers and sisters, let us do a good job of making our internal confusion a clarity of the Holy Spirit. It is the power of God that does this, and we open our hearts so that He can do it.
The Pope invited the faithful to voice a prayer the Church has used for “more than a millennium”:
‘Veni creator Spiritus! ‘Come, O Creator Spirit! Visit our minds. Fill with heavenly grace the hearts you have created.’ Let us ask the Holy Spirit to come to us and make us new persons, with the newness of the Spirit.
And today we celebrate...