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- Spirit of truth, Spirit
of sanctity
" I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot
bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide
you into all the truth" (John 16, 12-13).
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What an extraordinary prospect that can be related to another
word of Jesus to his disciples: " It is to your advantage
that I go away" (John, 16, 7
). Jesus being
with them, how could they not turn to him, their mind full of
his words, of his behaviour, expecting every thing from him?
Jesus far from wanting to attract all their attention wanted
rather for them to look to the future beyond him. |
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- He invited his disciples to recognize their own capabilities,
to what they are called upon: " You will do greater works
than I did" (John 14, 11-12).
The Ascension event means that after some time the apostles acknowledged
that Jesus was not any more physically with them. Then they can
begin to understand what they have been told: "You will
receive a strength coming upon you from the Holy Spirit and you
will be my witnesses
to the end of the earth" (Acts
1,8).
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" to the end of the earth"! A task not only for
the apostles but for every body who has met and appreciated the
Good News. A task but also a need, a desire for any body who
has discovered some of the wealth of its message. Truly Jesus'
words gives us some opening, his Spirit penetrates us but it
is not to fill a duty that we witness for Jesus, it is because
we would like to share with others this internal move that animates
and stimulates us. |
It is not possible to give a definition of the Spirit. That would
mean to restrict him into some limit and to reduce him to our
human level this infinite feeling that is inside us. It was already
the great intuition of the First Testament: do not make an image
of God at your human measure. God is not heard in the thunder,
neither in the storm but in "a feeble noise in a thin silence
(1 King, 19, 12
)
A continuous feeling, at some time more explicit, of a presence,
who without to be a stranger to what we are, at the same time
is an internal sign of transcendence and infinity. Being aware
of this presence that raises our life, we should not directly
relate to the Spirit our relative and hesitating feelings. It
will be using God to our own human purposes and to dress them
with absoluteness when we have to stay in humble search of growing.
A subtle presence who opens up our liberty without any constraint.
It comes to us, in our most intimate self in a unique specific
way for each of us during the course of our life. It is possible
to discover it through somebody else at privileged moments when
our attention is more focused, more respectful of their own personality
and tend to have, very often with out knowing it even without
giving it a name.
The Spirit, the Breath of sanctity penetrates through ourselves
and gives us a new and intense way of being and acting. This
reveals that inside any one of us there is more than ourselves,
or more exactly, the human being is a carrier of some thing greater
than how it looks . |
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