Let's Prepare Our Hearts - Episode 12 - One in the spirit by pr. giovanni traettino

Hello everybody, we at ICCRS and the Catholic Fraternity are working very hard now with all the preparations for the Golden Jubilee at Pentecost 2017. As a way of preparing for that great historic occasion we are encouraging everybody to spend some time praying on various themes relating to the Holy Spirit as we journey towards Pentecost. So each month you can make a short biblical reflection and listen to one of the pioneers of the renewal sharing their thoughts about that particular scripture. So we hope you'll join with us in praying towards the Golden Jubilee! I have here in front of me the page on which is written the history of the first Christian Pentecost, Acts 2, It is the fulfillment of the desire that God has had in every age, to come and live in the heart of his creature, of all those who would have welcomed Jesus as their Lord and Savior. After the first Pentecost, there have been many other Pentecost during Christian history. To come to our times, I will remember only that of 1906 at Azusa Street, from which originated the modern Pentecostal movement. The Pentecostal movement touched all the Churches, all the Christian denominations, I think of that in 1967, in which in particular Pentecost would get into the world of the Roman Catholic Church. Now we expect the celebration of the five hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, another visitation of God, that of the Protestant reform, I think today everyone agrees that it can be considered as such. The desire of Pope Francis for the Pentecost of 2017 was to bring together all Christians or all the Christian expressions, to invoke from the Lord a new Pentecost. A Pentecost that would bring life, renewal, awakening, a Pentecost of unity, If there is hope for the future of Christianity and of the unity of the Christians, this hope comes from the Holy Spirit, as somebody said it is the blowing of the Holy Spirit that makes us advance. We can only construct the unity on the basis of the unity of the Spirit, that is what suggested Apostle Paul in his Letter to the Ephesians. Preserving the unity of the Spirit we can proceed towards the unity of the faith and the unit of the whole Christian body. But we must begin with the unity of the Spirit and therefore we must invoke the Holy Spirit so that he comes in a powerful way to seal this God's desire in the heart of every Christian and we might remove all the obstacles of theological nature or even of psychological that prevent from approaching and speaking, dialoguing with each other. It is not the question of resolving the tensions, the doctrinal diversities, but it is only about hugging, about praying together, it is just about giving one another the hand. And in this new climate inaugurated by this spirit, by this attitude, we have to invoke the Lord and begin to walk together, and gradually the Lord with illuminate us, guide us and will tell us what steps to take. In the new climate inaugurated by the presence and by the inhabitation of the Holy Spirit, It will be much easier to talk to each other, to understand each other, to reason and to walk, to take further steps in the direction desired by the Lord. The Holy Spirit is also the one that shows us Christ, that makes us contemplate Christ, and to the extent that we contemplate Christ, to the extent that he is revealed to us by his presence, by his inhabitation in us, become much easier to embrace each other, it becomes much easier to know oneself as the Lord sees us and to promote that kind of climate and unity for which we are so hungry. Especially in the time in which there is great need for reconciliation with all the tensions that there are in the Christian world, but also in the secular society around us, there is a need of love, a hunger for unity. The Pentecost 2017 could be an important moment in this direction, for which we can already start praying, we can already begin to invoke the Lord, so that arise this type of irruption, this kind of visitation and the day after we can be more awakened and we can be more united with one another. This is my wish and that's why I invite you, come together, pray together, sing together, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we create the conditions to make another step forward. The Lord bless you. We shall meet at Pentecost 2017 in Rome Peace