Pope Francis opens new catechetical cycle on Holy Spirit’s role in salvation

 

Pope Francis greets pilgrims as he arrives at his general audience on Wednesday, May 29, 2024, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. / Credit: Vatican Media

Rome Newsroom, May 29, 2024 / 09:22 am (CNA).

Pope Francis on Wednesday opened a new catechetical series during his weekly general audience, focusing on the theme of creation across history and the role of the Holy Spirit in the story of salvation.

Titled “The Spirit and the Bride: The Holy Spirit Guides God’s People Toward Jesus Our Hope,” the new cycle will unfold across three main themes: the Old Testament, the New Testament, and “the time of the Church.”

“The Spirit of God, who in the beginning transformed chaos into cosmos, is at work to bring about this transformation in every person,” the pope said during the general audience held May 29 in St. Peter’s Square.

Pope Francis blesses a toddler during his general audience on Wednesday, May 29, 2024, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. Credit: Vatican Media
Pope Francis blesses a toddler during his general audience on Wednesday, May 29, 2024, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. Credit: Vatican Media

The first part of the series will begin with an overview of creation according to the Old Testament, but it will not be “biblical archaeology.” The pope explained that it will instead focus on how the promise given in the Old Testament “has been fully realized in Christ.”

“It will be like following the path of the sun from dawn to noon,” he added.

Quoting from the first two verses from the Book of Genesis, Francis observed that “the Spirit of God appears to us here as the mysterious power that moves the world from its initial formless, deserted, and gloomy state to its ordered and harmonious state.”

Pope Francis greets a newly married couple during his general audience on Wednesday, May 29, 2024, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. Credit: Vatican Media
Pope Francis greets a newly married couple during his general audience on Wednesday, May 29, 2024, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. Credit: Vatican Media

Referencing the division between the “confused” and the “beautiful and ordered,” Pope Francis observed that it is God who “makes the world pass from chaos to the cosmos.”

The pope underscored the Holy Spirit’s role in creation and as a protagonist in the story of salvation by pointing to the Psalms and the New Testament.

“The Apostle Paul introduces a new element into this relationship between the Holy Spirit and creation,” the pope said. “He speaks of a universe that ‘groans and suffers as in labor pains.’”

Pope Francis prays during his general audience on Wednesday, May 29, 2024, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. Credit: Vatican Media
Pope Francis prays during his general audience on Wednesday, May 29, 2024, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. Credit: Vatican Media

The pope emphasized that St. Paul understands the “cause of the suffering of creation in the corruption and sin of humanity,” which has alienated man from God and is a theme still present today.

“We see the havoc that humanity has wrought and continues to wreak upon creation, especially that part of it that has greater capacity to exploit its resources,” the pope said.

The pope built upon this reflection by noting that there is both an internal as well as an external “chaos” inherent in man.

Pope Francis greets young people during his general audience on Wednesday, May 29, 2024, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. Credit: Vatican Media
Pope Francis greets young people during his general audience on Wednesday, May 29, 2024, in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican. Credit: Vatican Media

“Around us we can say that there is external chaos, social chaos, political chaos,” the pope said. “We think of wars, we think of many boys and girls who don’t have anything to eat, of many social injustices — this is external chaos.”

At the end of the general audience Pope Francis renewed his regular appeal for peace and spoke for a moment on his emotional encounter with Ukrainian children last Saturday.

“The other day I received boys and girls who suffered burns and lost their legs in the war,” the pope recalled in a somber tone.

“War is always cruel. These boys and girls must start walking, moving with artificial arms … they have lost their smile. It’s very bad, very sad when a child loses his smile. We pray for Ukrainian children.”


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3 Comments

  1. I pray and hope this new emphasis on and about the Holy Spirit on the part of the Pope’s weekly catechesis gets amplified and multiplied throughout the whole Church where many of us Catholics still live the spiritual life as if the Holy Spirit does not exist and is not of the Triune God. Many of us today can easily be like the Ephesians who told St. Paul: “We have never even heard that there is a Holy Spirit” (Acts of the Apostles 19:2).

  2. We read: “…the new cycle will unfold across three main themes: the Old Testament, the New Testament, and ‘the time of the Church’.”

    Waiting to see the surely clear distinction between “the time of the Church” and the domestication of the Holy Trinity as proposed by the 12th-century Joachim de Fiore—not only three “themes,” but the periodization of God: the Age of Old Testament (the rules of God), then the Age of the Son (from the coming of Christ until about A.D. 1260), and then the Age of the Holy Spirit (the time of finally realized freedom and all that sort of stuff).

    No longer the eternal Blessed Trinity of creation, but a temporal Triad imprinted on chaos….The 19th-century and less backwardist sociologist August Comte proposed a more flat-earth triad in time: the age of Theology, then the age of Metaphysics, and then the age of Science—and logical positivism (truth by plebiscite).

    Are there any Comte- and Joachim-types around today?

    What about the synodal Cardinal Hollerich and his opinion on sound sexual morality: “I think that’s wrong. But I also believe that we are thinking ahead here in [terms of] teaching. As the Pope has expressed in the past, this can lead to a change in doctrine. Because I believe that the sociological-scientific foundation [!] of this teaching is no longer correct.” https://www.newwaysministry.org/2022/02/04/leading-cardinal-in-synod-seeks-change-in-church-teachings-on-homosexuality/

    And, then, about earlier and recurring views on terrestrial “chaos”. . . Even “before” chaos wasn’t there absolutely nothing at all? That is, precisely and absolutely, creation ex nihilo or “out of nothing” by an infinitely spiritual and Triune God?

    Is this a good time for the perennial Catholic Church—the Mystical Body of [the incarnate] Christ—to clearly distinguish between the Blessed Trinity as more than any triadic imprint on the chaos of history? More than the trisecting imagination Joachim, or the flat-earth ideology of Comte, or the flat-footed “science” of Hollerich, or the in-step half-blessing of irregular “couples” under Cardinal Fernandez?

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