Christians must rely more on the Holy Spirit than on their own plans and strategies if they hope to fulfil their mission to share the good news of God’s love and of salvation in Christ, Pope Francis said yesterday. Source: CNS.
The Pope began his weekly general audience explaining to the crowd that he once again asked an aide to read his catechesis “because I’m still struggling – I’m much better, but I struggle if I speak too much”.
Since late November, Pope Francis has had respiratory difficulties related to a bronchial infection.
Msgr Filippo Ciampanelli, an official of the Vatican Secretariat of State, read the Pope’s text, which was part of a yearlong series of talks about zeal for evangelisation. But Pope Francis took the microphone back at the end of the audience to ask people to continue praying for peace in Ukraine and in Israel and Palestine.
The Pope’s main text focused on the need to pray for and rely on the Holy Spirit’s assistance in evangelisation. Without the Holy Spirit, the Pope wrote, “all zeal is vain and falsely apostolic: it would only be our own and would not bear fruit.”
“The Spirit is the protagonist; he always precedes the missionaries and makes the fruit grow,” the Pope said, and that is a comforting thought because then Christians know that while they have an obligation to share the Gospel, the results are always the work of the Holy Spirit.
“The Lord has not left us theological dispensations or a pastoral manual to apply, but the Holy Spirit who inspires the mission,” he said.
Mission outreach inspired by the Spirit “always has two characteristics: creativity and simplicity”, the Pope’s text said, and those traits are especially necessary “in this age of ours, which does not help us have a religious outlook on life.”
At “the centre of all evangelising activity and all efforts at Church renewal,” he said, is the simple Gospel truth: “Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you.”
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Holy Spirit inspires creativity, simplicity in evangelisation, Pope says (By Cindy Wooden, CNS via USCCB)
