IMAGE: CNS/Paul Haring
By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Holy Spirit continues to give
Christians different gifts and to call them to share those gifts with each
other in a community marked by forgiveness and “unity in diversity,”
Pope Francis said on Pentecost.
“In a way both creative and unexpected,” the pope
said, the Holy Spirit “generates diversity, for in every age he causes new
and varied charisms to blossom. Then he brings about unity: he joins together,
gathers and restores harmony.”
With tens of thousands of Catholic charismatics from around
the world and with dozens of Pentecostal and evangelical leaders present, Pope
Francis celebrated Pentecost Mass June 4 in St. Peter’s Square and concluded a
five-day celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Catholic charismatic
renewal.
In his homily at the Mass, the pope said Christians can block
the unity in diversity desired by the Holy Spirit by focusing on their
differences rather than on what they share.
“This happens when we want to separate, when we take
sides and form parties, when we adopt rigid and airtight positions, when we
become locked into our own ideas and ways of doing things, perhaps even
thinking that we are better than others,” he said.
“When this happens,” the pope said, “we
choose the part over the whole, belonging to this or that group before
belonging to the church” and taking pride in being “Christians of the
‘right’ or the ‘left’ before being on the side of Jesus.”
The other temptation, he said, is to seek unity without
tolerating diversity. “Here, unity becomes uniformity, where everyone has
to do everything together and in the same way, always thinking alike.”
When the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples at
Pentecost, he said, the first gift the Spirit brought was forgiveness for their
sins and the grace to forgive others.
“Here we see the beginning of the church, the glue that
holds us together, the cement that binds the bricks of the house:
forgiveness,” he said.
Forgiveness “preserves unity despite everything,
prevents collapse and consolidates and strengthens,” he said.
“Forgiveness sets our hearts free and enables us to start afresh.”
Pope Francis began his Pentecost celebrations at an
ecumenical vigil June 3 with some 50,000 Catholic charismatics and Pentecostals
from more than 125 countries gathered for praise and worship at the site of the
ancient Roman Circus Maximus.
Although less exuberantly, the pope, too, sang with his hands
cupped open or with his hands raised. He stood between Michelle Moran,
president of the International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services, and Patti
Mansfield, who was present when the Catholic charismatic renewal was born. In
February 1967 Mansfield was one of the Duquesne University students, who
experienced an outpouring of the Holy Spirit during a retreat.
The charismatic renewal is “a current of grace,”
Pope Francis told the crowd at the Circus Maximus. “It is a work that was
born — Catholic? No. It was born ecumenical,” with similar results in
many denominations and with Pentecostals providing support and education to new
Catholic charismatics.
“It was born ecumenical because it is the Holy Spirit
who creates unity,” the pope said. The Holy Spirit drew Catholics and
Pentecostals together to profess that Jesus is Lord and “to proclaim
together the Father’s love for all his children.”
In ancient Rome, Pope Francis said, Christians were martyred
in the Circus Maximus “for the entertainment of those watching.” He urged
the crowd to remember how many Christians are being killed for their faith
today and to recognize that their murderers are not asking them their
denomination, just whether or not they are Christian.
If those who want to kill Christians believe they are one,
he said, it is urgent that Christians be “united by the work of the Holy
Spirit in prayer and in action on behalf of those who are weaker.”
“Walk together. Work together. Love each other,”
Pope Francis told them.
Being baptized in the Spirit and knowing how to praise God,
he said, “are not enough” if Christians don’t also help those in
need.
An Italian Pentecostal pastor, Giovanni Traettino, a friend
of Pope Francis’ since they met at an ecumenical charismatic gathering in
Buenos Aires in 2006, told the crowd that as Christians grow in their love for
God, they should simultaneously grow in love for one another.
“The movement of the Holy Spirit, also known as the
Pentecostal movement, has in its DNA — its life in the Holy Spirit — the
vocation to build Christian unity,” he said.
Pentecostals and Catholic charismatics have not always
gotten along, Traettino said. But “the election of Pope Francis clearly
opened a new season, especially in relations with us.”
Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the papal
household, offered a reflection also focusing on the ecumenical vocation of the
charismatic renewal.
How many of the divisions among Christians “have been
due to the desire to make a name for ourselves or for our own church more than
for God,” he asked. “A renewed outpouring of the Holy Spirit will not
be possible without a collective movement of repentance on the part of all Christians.”
Tens of thousands of people gathered for hours of song and
prayer before the pope arrived. As Rome’s summer sun beat down on the pilgrims,
Elaine Pollard and Sandra Mobley from Holy Cross parish in Brooklyn, New York,
found space in the shade under one of the few trees on the edge of the crowd.
They had traveled to Rome with group of 88 people.
Both women are lifelong Catholics who discovered the
charismatic renewal in 1989. Pollard said she has stayed with it “because
my whole life changed. The first night I went I wasn’t impressed.” That was
a Saturday and when she went to work on Monday, “I started to hum one of
the songs and my heart just broke open, like living water” flowing forth.
“It changed my whole life.”
As she spoke to Catholic News Service, the choir on stage
started singing, “10,000 Reasons,” a song of praise. Pollard started
to cry.
“We were singing this song when my husband died”
15 months ago, she said. He was in the hospital, dying, and her adopted
daughter started singing it. Other relatives, who couldn’t be there in person,
were connected by Skype and they were singing it, too, as he passed away.
It is still difficult, she said, but “he wanted me to
come and be here.”
Kaye and George Balsam and Terry Mroz from St. Gabriel the
Archangel parish in McKinney, Texas, were at the Circus Maximus as part of a
130-person pilgrimage that visited the Holy Land before arriving in Rome for
the Pentecost celebrations.
The trip was George’s first with charismatics and he was
enthused. “This is what we need to reinvent the church,” he said.
Getting people excited about the faith is what is needed if “we want the
church to get straightened out and stop losing people,” he said.
Mroz said, “We receive baptism as babies and then we’re
confirmed,” but so many people experience the sacraments only as
“ritual” and are unaware of the power the sacraments hold. The charismatic
renewal “reawakens those gifts you received at baptism and confirmation.
Until you get the Holy Spirit, you don’t get this reawakening. That’s what it
is — a reawakening of the gifts given you before.”
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Contributing to this story was Carol Glatz.
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