1 – The Christian life ‘sculpted by the Spirit’. 

From the beginning the existence of every Christian is due to the Spirit’s activity.  The Spirit is the support helping us to realize God’s plan of salvation for us, helping us to both understand and bring about that salvation.  Let us look closely at two important references right from the liturgical season in which we are living.

• The Holy Spirit is the Risen Christ’s gift to us, already promised by Jesus in the farewell discourse of the Last Supper, then poured out on the Apostles on the ‘Easter evening’ and then definitively given on the day of Pentecost.

• Therefore, in a privileged way, this time of Easter and Pentecost is the celebration of the Spirit: it is the Spirit who makes Christ present again among his own, who takes the first steps in proclaiming the Good News, and who directs missionary pastoral care, ever beyond – opening new missionary horizons to those proclaiming the Gospel (as we see in Paul’s missionary experience).

2 – The indispensable role of the Holy Spirit: • in the life of Christ (Incarnation, Baptism, public life, Passion, Resurrection, Ascension) with different moments but lived under the action of the Spirit;

• in the life of Christ (the Incarnation, His Baptism, public life, Passion, Resurrection, Ascension) each a different moment but all lived out with the Spirit’s activity; 

• in the life of the Church that is born of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, guiding that Church in his action around interior growth and apostolic activity (see the Acts of the Apostles) and constituting it as a spiritual community and not just ‘a grouping of human persons’, or an institution;

• in the Gospel proclamation: it is the Spirit who gives strength and courage to proclaim an overwhelming message that calls for radical conversion and full adherence to Christ, starting precisely with those who are called to proclaim the Gospel;

• in liturgical celebrations that without the Spirit’s presence would be nothing more than a set of rituals and magic, incomprehensible and lifeless formulas;

• in the efficacy of the Word: The Spirit makes the Word understandable,  fruitful, and up to date for men and women of every age;

• in the every day life: to realize the fundamental vocation of ‘being saints’ is always to allow oneself to be led by the Spirit, to be shaped by his effective action that fights the spirit of evil and remain faithful to Christ. This is especially true for special vocations.

Concretely, the Holy Spirit is given to us so that we become Christ’s true and authentic witnesses, according to His words and His mandate to the apostles in the talks after the Last Supper and before the Ascension (see Acts 1: 8).

3 – The gifts of the Holy Spirit – As the gift of the Father and of the Son, the Spirit acts in us through the richness of his gifts, which are manifold: 

the theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity that put us in direct contact with God;

• the seven gifts: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord;

• the gifts listed in Gal 5:22: love, joy, peace, patience, generosity, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control that Paul puts in opposition to the fruits of the flesh that are: fornication, impurity, libertinage, idolatry, witchcraft , enmities, discord, jealousy, dissension, divisions, factions, envies, drunkenness, orgies and things like that (vv.19-21);

• the charisms mentioned by Paul in 1 Cor 12:4-11 and 14:1ff., With the understanding that the multiplicity of gifts must be understood and lived starting from the uniqueness of the same Spirit, as well as that everyone is for the utility common, even if greater than all the charisms is charity! (1Cor 12.31);

• ministries and various activities contributing to the good functioning of the Christian community.

4 – The way the Holy Spirit acts: on Christ, on the Church, on each one of us. It is an action that involves all being and activity.  Concretely, the Spirit pushes:

• to proclaim the Gospel: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me …’ (Lk 4: 18-22);

• towards prayer, both as attitude, desire and an end, and as a suggestion of the contents; this is what Paul expresses very well in Rom 8;

• to fight against the enemy – as told by the Gospels for Jesus in his going to the desert; for the Church and the Christian in everyday life;

• to be united with Christ and, through Him, to seek and do the Father’s will;

• to make the right life choices: in every aspect of spiritual discernment that one needs;

• towards renewal, fidelity to the faith and to one’s own vocation: the Spirit, always creative, brings about ‘new things’, because it makes us ‘new’ and makes it possible to live together both faithful to tradition and creative about the future. The Spirit is also the foundation of Christian hope;

• but the Spirit’s greatest action is the fact that he makes us become ‘Christ’, and helps us to realize our fundamental vocation to holiness.

5 – Mary and the Holy Spirit’s action in her life.  

Even in Mary everything happens through the work of the Spirit: this is what the angel Gabriel reveals in the Annunciation and we see it manifest in the song of the Magnificat of the Virgin and then reappears in the Pentecost event, where Mary, already ‘filled with the Spirit’, can to intercede in a strong way the coming of the Spirit on the whole nascent Christian community. And Mary’s presence in the life of the Church: being recognized as a mother, member and model, according to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, ensures linking her life with the action of the same Spirit.

6 – The Holy Spirit in the life of a Vincentian. 

Every Christian, including each Vincentian, already possesses this gift from above, having received it in Baptism and Confirmation and continuing to receive it in the other sacraments. Then there is a call to the particular vocation he received; all that has to do with the power of the Spirit.  He is love and this love has been poured into the heart of the believer (see Rom 5: 5) and in particular soul the commitment of charity and service. St. Louise, even more than St. Vincent, greatly emphasized the role of the Spirit in the life of those who are engaged in service.  But, interpreting the thinking of our own Saint a bit, we can affirm that without the Spirit we could not carry out the works of God, able neither to think of them nor develop them on our own. Hence the importance of prayer and the invocation of the Spirit especially at the beginning of every commitment to charity, in order to have the indispensable strength and courage to fully commit ourselves in the most convinced and sustained manner (we can see a reference to invitation to prayer before and after the visit with the poor).

There is an aspect of the Spirit’s action that applies to everyone: the Spirit is the one who helps to make the right spiritual discernment, that is the ability to read the events of our personal life and history with the eyes of God, to know how to evaluate these events in order to make the right choices. All of us have a great need for this. Today we need to know how to untangle the many options that arise in the various situations of life. This applies to the fundamental choices (vocation to the priesthood, to marriage, to the consecrated life) as well as to daily choices of a moral, ecclesial, and social nature. The Spirit is actively involved in the vocation of the Vincentian and with the possibility of persevering in it. It is important to recognize that at the genesis of the commitment to charity there was a call from above, a vocation! This is what St. Vincent expressed when he recommended to the consecrated and the laity to live coherently with the vocation received. Referencing Acts 6: 1-7 can be useful: in the selection of the seven deacons the criterion for evaluation is precisely the reference to the Holy Spirit. The text speaks of seven men of good reputation, full of the Spirit and wisdom. And further on, speaking of Stephen, he is defined as a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. As if to say that there can be no availability to service without the effective action of the Spirit of God.  Let us think about these consequences in our own lives of service.

7 – ‘Do not quench the Spirit’ (I Th. 5:19).  

There is always the risk and the possibility of not paying proper attention to the Spirit’s strong and silent presence, pushing us toward the good. And there are so many ways to ‘extinguish’ or to silence, in ourselves  and in others, this important divine voice and this force of spiritual renewal. And all these ways have only one name: sin, which in various ways makes us resist divine action. We must therefore be careful and vigilant, as well as we must know how to ‘discern’ the true Spirit from false or deceptive reveries. St. Vincent often spoke of the “angel of evil” disguising himself as an “angel of light,” in order to deceive and make the children of God lose their way.  In order to avoid running into this danger there are the means we already know: prayer, the sacraments, listening to the Word of God, the help of a spiritual director, the ability to reflect and examine one’s own life and a concrete commitment to the service of others. Following the Spirit’s lead and allowing the Spirit to lead us provides a serious orientation to our lives and helps us to achieve a healthy and complete equilibrium. The Spirit always helps to “put one’s life back in order.”  We are learning to seek out the Spirit not just during those great ecclesial and community occasions, but also in our own personal situations.

By: P. Mario Di Carlo, CM

Translation from Italian to English

Dan Paul Borlik, CM

Western Province, USA