It is not good that the person should be alone” (Genesis 2:18). Necessarily, everyone tends to join others. Numberless associations of economic, religious, social and political character, as well as others of Masonic and Mafia-like nature, conspire so that their adepts may get what they cannot obtain by themselves. “It shall not be like this” for those who follow Jesus. His only concern is love for the brethren, starting from the last, since all are children of the same Father.
In the past months, we have reflected on the body of the first community and its framework: fraternity. Now, we shall look at the spirit that animates it. In fact, the body lives of what it breathes. But there is spirit and spirit. There is egoism that provokes an “against” type of solidarity and feeds on other people’s death. There is love that inclines to accepting everybody and rejoices for the other people’s life.
After forty days in the company of the Risen Jesus and ten days without Him, the disciples are full of the Holy Spirit: they possess God’s very life that is the love between the Father and the Son. The Spirit is the breath of life. We do not see it but only when we are without it: instead of a living person, there is a corpse! It is fire of love which burns the heart and brims over on the outside. What burns inside comes out with unstoppable impetus: it is word of novelty and freedom, an offering of communion to anyone who listens.
The Holy Spirit is the supreme gift: it is God who gives Himself in order to become our life. We are not only called God’s children, but that is what we really are (1 John 3:1). God’s Spirit has its “materiality”: it inhabits our body and animates it, like its true temple (1 Corinthians 6:19). It becomes visible in the fruits it produces: “love, joy, peace, patience, benevolence, goodness, fidelity, meekness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22). It has the unmistakable taste of good and beautiful life, the only one which is desirable and possible. Love, on its turn, is generous and benevolent, not envious, vane, conceited or disrespectful, it isn’t selfish, angry, full of grudges and complacent in what is evil; it rejoices in truth, believes everything, hopes in everything and cares for everything. Without love, everything is nothing. With love, everything becomes precious: it is the figure that, placed in front of the zeros of every reality, gives value to everything. And love will never end (1 Corinthians 13:1ff), because “God is love” (1 John 4:8).
Even at Babel, people have one language only, a kind of common cyber-tongue! But their aggregation is caused by the frenzy of power: they do not understand one another and soon they bring division among themselves. Since each one of them thinks about himself and cuts himself off from the others. At Pentecost, instead, everyone speaks his own language and all the others understand it in their own mother tongue. Because the Spirit possesses the language of love that everybody understands: it is the Spirit of the Son that is communicated to everyone of the brethren.
It is given to everybody. The 120 disciples represent the entire humanity, called to become God’s people: holy, royal and prophetic. As a matter of fact, the disciples number 10 times 12, since 12 are the tribes of Israel and 10 is the number required to make a community. They are men and women who live together in the Cenacle and persevere in prayer together with Mary.
Now history is a continuous Pentecost: every moment (=atom!) of time is like a “small vessel” which we freely fill with love instead of egoism: the sense of our life is “the acquisition of the Holy Spirit,” so that everything may be saved from nothingness and God may be all in all.
Evangelization, which began at Pentecost, is always an overflowing of the love of Christ that fills our heart at the thought that He gave His life for us all (Cf. 2 Corinthians 5:14). This love, “like a fire that lights up other fires,” knocks down cultural, religious and social barriers: it makes communion with all, without excluding anybody and respecting each one’s diversity. © Popoli – www.popoli.info
