Be docile to the Holy Spirit - Pope Francis at Casa
Santa Marta
(Vatican Radio) One must be
docile to the Holy Spirit, said Pope Francis Thursday at Mass in his residence
of Casa Santa Marta, and one must not resist Him. Pope Francis warns against
those who resist the Spirit with "so-called fidelity to the law" and
invites the faithful to pray for the grace of the docility to the Spirit.
Philip evangelized the
Ethiopian, a senior official of Queen Candace. Pope Francis was inspired by
this fascinating account in the Acts of the Apostles, in the first reading of
today, focusing his attention on the docility to the Holy Spirit.
Do not resist the Spirit
under the guise of loyalty to the law
The protagonist of this
meeting, Pope Francis noted, is in fact not so much Philip, nor even the
Ethiopian, but just the Spirit. "It is Him who does things. It is the
Spirit who gives birth to and grows the Church.”
"In days past, the
Church has shown us how there can be a drama of resisting the Spirit: closed,
hard, foolish hearts resisting the Spirit. We’ve seen things - the healing of
the lame man by Peter and John at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple; the words
and the great things Stephen was doing … but they were closed off to these
signs of the Spirit and resisted the Spirit. They were seeking to justify this
resistance with a so-called fidelity to the law, that is, to the letter of the
law."
In referring to the reading,
Pope Francis said that "the Church proposes the opposite: no resistance to
the Spirit, but docility to the Spirit, which is precisely the attitude of the
Christian.” He continued: “Being docile to the Spirit, this docility is the yes
that the Spirit may act and move forward to build up the Church.” Here, he
added, is Philip, one of the Apostles, “busy as all bishops are, and this day
surely he had his plan to work.” But the Spirit tells him to leave what he has
planned and go to the Ethiopian - "and he obeyed." Pope Francis then
outlined the meeting between Philip and the Ethiopian, in which the Apostle
explains the Gospel and its message of salvation. The Spirit, he said,
"was working in the heart of the Ethiopian", offers him "the
gift of faith and this man felt something new in his heart." And at the
end he asks to be baptized, being docile to the Holy Spirit.
Docility to the Spirit
gives us joy
"Two men,” the Pope
said, “one an evangelist and one who knew nothing of Jesus, but the Spirit had
sowed a healthy curiosity, not the curiosity of gossip." And in the end
the eunuch goes his way with joy, "the joy of the Spirit, in the docility
of the Spirit."
"We have heard, these
past days, about resistance to the Spirit; and today we have an example of two
men who were docile to the voice of the Spirit. And the sign of this is joy.
Docility to the Spirit is a source of joy. “But I would like to do something,
this … but I feel the Lord ask me to do something else. Joy I will find there,
where there is the call of the Spirit!”
It is the Holy Spirit who
carries the Church forward
A beautiful prayer asking for
this docility, the Pope revealed, we may find in the First Book of Samuel, the
prayer which the priest Eli suggests to the young Samuel, who during the night
heard a voice calling to him: "Speak Lord, your servant is
listening."
"This is a beautiful
prayer that we can always pray: 'Speak, Lord, because I am listening.' The
prayer asking for this docility to the Holy Spirit and with this docility to
carry forward the Church, to be instruments of the Spirit so that the Church
can move forward. 'Speak, Lord, because your servant is listening'. We should
pray this many times a day: when we have a doubt, when we do not know what to
do, or when we want simply to pray. And with this prayer we ask for the grace
of docility to the Holy Spirit."
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