SPIRITUAL POST OF FATHER ROMAN CHROMY

 Upheaval

New creation: Jesus breathed it into the disciples as God did in the past when creating man.

“Receive the Holy Spirit! » (John 20:22). The call of the Lord Jesus to the disciples, reported by the evangelist John, is made more concrete in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. Luke describes a change in the attitude of the apostles, which occurred thanks to the sending of the Holy Spirit. Locked up and afraid, they are now starting to speak in other languages. Peter gives his first catechesis on the crucified and resurrected Christ, after which around three thousand people are converted. The image of the first Christians evoked by the author of the Acts of the Apostles is precise and clear: they live together, gathered around the Eucharist and preaching the word of God, and the Lord constantly multiplies new disciples, both Jews and pagans. The sending of the Holy Spirit, which occurred on the fiftieth day after the resurrection of Jesus, becomes the beginning of the history of the Church.

How good that the history of the Church not only continues, but is still unfinished. She is waiting for us to move forward! It is in her that we still discover “like a violent wind that blows” (Acts 2, 2) and “like tongues of fire” (Acts 2, 3), and the Church again - as the authors of the Catechism of the Catholic Church - transmits to us the faith of the Apostles and is the place of our knowledge of the Holy Spirit. He invariably reveals himself in the Scriptures which he inspired, in the Tradition transmitted from generation to generation, in the teaching of the Magisterium which he assists, in the liturgy and sacramental prayer, in the gifts and charisms, as well as in the testimony of all the saints and the signs of apostolic and missionary life (cf. CCC 688).

The upheaval experienced by the Apostles on the day of Pentecost is not only a historical event. It appears where we invoke the Spirit of God and can become the experience of each of us, according to the words of Pope Francis in the apostolic exhortation “Gaudete et exultate”. The Holy Father, writing about the call to holiness in the modern world, encourages us to always ask the Holy Spirit what Jesus expects of us in every moment of our lives and in every decision we must make. And he expresses a beautiful wish: “May God make you recognize what this word is, this message of Jesus that God wants to say to the world through his life. Let yourself be transformed, let yourself be renewed by the Spirit, so that this is possible and so that your precious mission is not lost” (p. 23).

Father Roman Chromy

Spiritual Advisor to the European Continental Coordination