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Pope Francis: Holy Spirit Doesn’t See ‘Left’ and ‘Right’

Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
Pope Closes Marathon Weekend Saying Holy Spirit Doesn’t See ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ - The Tablet


ROME (Crux) — Pope Francis closed a marathon of activities and messages over the weekend May 31 with a livestreamed Mass on the feast of Pentecost, insisting the Holy Spirit is a gift from God that unites and for whom distinctions such as “conservative” or “progressive” have no meaning.

Pointing to St. Paul’s letter First Letter to the Corinthians, in which he says that “there are different kinds of gifts” in the Christian community “but the same spirit,” Pope Francis the words “diversity and unity” can, at first blush, seem contradictory.

What St. Paul meant, he said, is that “the Holy Spirit is the one who brings together the many; and that the Church was born this way: we are all different, yet united by the same Holy Spirit.”

Noting that each of the apostles Jesus called were different – some were fishermen, some tax collectors, some were meek in personality, and others more excitable – Pope Francis said, “Jesus did not change them; he did not make them into a set of prepackaged models. He left their differences and now he unites them by anointing them with the Holy Spirit.”

“We too have our differences,” of opinion, choices and ideas, he said, cautioning against the temptation to “always fiercely to defend our ideas, believing them to be good for everybody and agreeing only with those who think as we do,” he said.

“This is a faith created in our own image; it is not what the Spirit wants,” the pontiff said. “We might think that what unite us are our beliefs and our morality. But there is much more: our principle of unity is the Holy Spirit.”

Pope Francis urged Catholics to look at one another with the eyes of the Holy Spirit, rather than the world, which “sees us only as on the right or left,” whereas the Holy Spirit “sees us as sons and daughters of the Father and brothers and sisters of Jesus.”

“The world sees conservatives and progressives; the Spirit sees children of God. A worldly gaze sees structures to be made more efficient; a spiritual gaze sees brothers and sisters pleading for mercy,” he said, noting that when going out to proclaim the Gospel, the disciples could have broken up into small groups based on common roots.

They could have also waited until they felt that they better understood Jesus’s teachings, but this is not what happened, he said, insisting that the Holy Spirit “does not want the memory of the Master to be cultivated in small groups locked in upper rooms where it is easy to ‘nest.’”
 

soulsurvivor

Active Member
Premium Member
... the world, which “sees us only as on the right or left,” whereas the Holy Spirit “sees us as sons and daughters of the Father and brothers and sisters of Jesus.”...
This may be true about the Holy Spirit, but it sure looks like from Matthew 25:41, that Jesus does see us as on the right or on the left : " Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.' "
 
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