Vatican City, 9 April 2014 (VIS) – In
today's general audience Pope Francis began a series of catechesis
dedicated to the Holy Spirit, which “constitutes the soul and the
vital lymph of the Church and of every Christian”. The Holy Spirit
is “God's quintessential gift”, and in turn “communicates many
spiritual gifts to those who welcome it”. The Church identifies
seven of these, a number that symbolically indicates plenitude and
completeness, and these are invoked in the ancient prayer, the
“Sequence to the Holy Spirit”: wisdom, understanding, counsel,
fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord.
Today the Holy Father spoke about the
first: wisdom. “It is not simply human wisdom, the fruit of
knowledge and experience”. The wisdom the Holy Spirit grants is
“the grace of being able to see things through God's eyes. It
seeing the world, situations … problems, everything, with the eyes
of God. … And obviously this derives from intimacy with God …
from the relationship of a son with his Father. … When we are in
communion with the Lord, it is through the Holy Spirit that our heart
transforms and we are able to perceive all its warmth and
predilection”.
The Holy Spirit endows the Christian
with wisdom, but “not, however, in the sense of having an answer
for everything, of knowing everything, but in the sense of 'knowing'
God … of knowing how God acts, knowing when something is God's and
when it is not. … The heart of the man who is wise in this way has
the taste, the flavour of God. … We have the Holy Spirit inside us,
in our heart; we can listen to it, or we can choose not to listen to
it. If we listen to the Holy Spirit, He will teach us this way of
wisdom, and will give us the wisdom to see through God's eyes, to
hear with God's ears, to love with the heart of God, to judge with
God's judgement. This is the wisdom that the Holy Spirit gives us,
and all of us can have this. We need only ask the Holy Spirit”.
As an example of wisdom in daily life,
the Pope gave the example of marriage; if, after an argument, a
married couple “do not look at each other, or look at each other
without warmth: is this the wisdom of God? No! If, instead, they say,
' the trouble has passed, let's make up' and begin again in peace …
this is the gift of wisdom”.
“We do not learn this”, he
concluded; “it is a gift from the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we must
ask the Lord Who gives us the Holy Spirit, Who gives us the gift …
of that wisdom of God that teaches us to look through God's eyes, to
feel with God's heart, to speak with God's words. And so, with this
wisdom, we go ahead, we create a family, build a Church, and we are
all sanctified. Let us ask, today, for the grace of wisdom. And let
us ask this of Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom”.
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