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Pope Leo XIV on Saturday urged Catholics to embrace the Holy Spirit as a source of freedom and grace, addressing a crowd of tens of thousands during his first Pentecost as pope and calling on the faithful to adopt “the way of the Beatitudes” to spread the Gospel message.
The pontiff addressed a massive crowd, estimated by the Vatican at around 70,000, in St. Peter’s Square on June 7 during a prayer vigil there as part of the festivities for the Jubilee of Ecclesial Movements, Associations, and New Communities.
He told the faithful that “tonight, we sense the fragrance of the chrism with which our foreheads have been anointed.”
“Dear brothers and sisters, baptism and confirmation united us to Jesus’ mission of making all things new, to the kingdom of God,” the pope said. “Just as love enables us to sense the presence of a loved one, so tonight we sense in one another the fragrance of Christ.”
“This is a mystery; it amazes us and it leads us to reflect,” he said.
The pontiff said the concept of synodality “demands that we each recognize our own poverty and our riches, that we feel part of a greater whole, apart from which everything withers, even the most original and unique of charisms.”
“All creation exists solely in the form of coexistence, sometimes dangerous, yet always interconnected,” the pope said, citing the late Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’. “And what we call ‘history’ only takes place as coexistence, living together, however contentiously, but always together.”
Leo noted that “where there is the Spirit, there is movement, a journey to be made.” The Holy Spirit, he said, “teaches us to walk together in unity.”
“We are a people on the move. This does not set us apart but unites us to humanity like the yeast in a mass of dough, which causes it to rise,” he said.
Evangelization, the pope said, is “not our attempt to conquer the world”; it is rather “the infinite grace that radiates from lives transformed by the kingdom of God.”
“It is the way of the Beatitudes, a path that we tread together, between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet,’ hungering and thirsting for justice, poor in spirit, merciful, meek, pure of heart, men and women of peace,” he said.
To walk this path, the pope said, requires “no need of powerful patrons,” or compromises, or “emotional strategies.”
“Evangelization is always God’s work. If at times it takes place through us, it is thanks to the bonds that it makes possible,” he said.
He urged the faithful to be “deeply attached” to their own parishes and Church communities so that the entire Catholic Church can “work together harmoniously as one.”
“The challenges facing humanity will be less frightening, the future will be less dark and discernment will be less complicated, if together we obey the Holy Spirit!” he said. ■
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