Spirituality

A great union with Jesus and Mary in the tenderness of the Father

“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow …”

The meaning of the angel’s message was not restricted to the birth of Jesus alone – its magnificence resounds through the centuries. Mary understood this so well that she was able to sing: “For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed.” She knew that the history of the world was unfolding in her.

More truly than St. Paul and the other saints, Mary could say “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”. Thus her entire meditation has as its purpose to make us into “other Christs”, to fashion within us, trait by trait, the image of Jesus.

To be an apostle is to allow Jesus Christ to be born and to grow within ourselves, and to bear Him to our brothers and sisters. Through our union with Mary, we extend the work of the Spirit in the Church. This union imposes itself on us, therefore, as if it were a law.

Mary precedes our efforts. When Mary is present in a soul, she gives it a more profound, more enduring love of humanity.

The Holy Spirit, Life-Breath of the Church

The first Pentecost, foundation of the Church

At the Ascension, when Jesus was on the point of leaving his apostles, he charged them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, “of which you have heard, He said, from my own lips: John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized in the Holy Spirit not many days hence.” (Acts 1.4-5).

In obedience to the Master’s injunction, the apostles returned to the “Upper Room” in Jerusalem, their customary meeting place. There they waited for the fulfillment of the promise, united and persevering in prayer, in communion of hope and expectation, with Mary, the mother of Jesus.

In the Acts of the Apostles we read how the Holy Spirit appeared to the first group of the one hundred and twenty disciples on the day of Pentecost, under the form of a violent wind which shook the house, and of tongues like fire which came to rest on each of them.

This outpouring of the Spirit signals the visible birth of the Church: it transformed the fearful, trembling apostles, beginning with Peter, into fearless witnesses of Christ, who would henceforward proclaim, fearlessly and cogently, that the crucified Jesus was risen and alive, and demonstrate the truth of their claim by signs and wonders, up to and including martyrdom.

Pentecost continued

The outpouring of the Spirit, however, is not an event in the past that is over and done with: Pentecost, as a transformative experience brought about by the Holy Spirit, is still going on in the Church.

The acts of the Apostles already highlights other experiences of the Spirit breaking through and bringing about conversions, cures, new pastoral orientations.

Pentecost remains pertinent

In the recent past, when he was announcing the Second Vatican Council, John XXIII did not hesitate to claim a special inspiration of the Holy Spirit and to ask the bishops to join in prayer with Mary, begging the Holy Spirit “to work marvels once more in our day, as on a new Pentecost”.

After John XXIII, Paul VI asserted that “The primary need of the Church is to live out Pentecost at all times”. And in our time, John Paul II has repeated on many occasions that the New Evangelization must derive its momentum from the grace of Pentecost.

The experience of the Holy Spirit, lived in response to prayer – an experience of conversion, of recognizing the living Christ, of openness to the Holy Spirit with his gifts, his charisma, his power – is to be found taking place before our very eyes, through that current of grace which is called the Charismatic Renewal. In order to do justice to its scope and avoid any suggestion of exclusivity, it might be better named the Renewal in the Holy Spirit.

The Church is more than a building, more than a organisation

As baptized in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit we too are children of the same Father and members of the Church.

The Church of which Mary is icon and mother, is the mystical body of Christ. “FIAT” wishes to love and serve her faithfully.

The spirituality of “FIAT” is at once trinitarian, marian and ecclesial.

“FIAT” must be located in the flow of grace that was Vatican II and still is. The Council reminds us indeed that “baptism in water and the Holy Spirit” represents a call to holiness, and points in particular to the role of the laity in the mission of the Church, that the proclamation of the gospel would renew families and the whole social life.

Evangelical zeal