Pope: Listen with your heart, feel within the fire of Pentecost

Francis celebrates Mass on the occasion of the vigil of the solemnity of Pentecost: "How I wish that the people who live in Rome would recognize the Church, recognize us for this more than mercy, for this more than humanity and tenderness, of which there is  it's so much needed!  You would feel at home, the "maternal home" where you are always welcome and where you can always come back ".

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - We must listen with our hearts, open our eyes and ears but above all our hearts: "Then we will really start walking.  Then we will feel within us the fire of Pentecost, which drives us to cry out to the men and women of this city that their slavery is over and that it is Christ the way that leads to the city of Heaven,"  Pope Francis said in his homily given at the Pentecost vigil.

The Holy Spirit - says the pontiff - "flows from the womb of mercy of the Risen Jesus, fills our womb with a" good measure, pressed, full and overflowing "with mercy (see Lk 6:38) and transforms us into a Church-womb of mercy, that is, into a 'mother with a heart' open for everyone!  How I wish that the people who live in Rome would recognize the Church, recognize us for this more than mercy, for this more than humanity and tenderness, of which there is so much need!  You would feel at home, the "maternal home" where you are always welcome and where you can always come back ".

Francis, returning to one of the main themes of his pontificate, continued  "always welcomed, listened to, well interpreted, helped to take a step forward in the direction of the kingdom of God ... Just as a mother can do, even with children who are now grown up  .  [...] Divine Love is the Holy Spirit, which springs from the Heart of Christ.  He is the "spiritual rock" that accompanies the people of God in the desert, so that drawing from the living water, they can quench their thirst along the way (see 1 Cor 10: 4) ".

We know it, he warns: "There is also today, as in every time, those who try to build" a city and a tower that reaches heaven "(see Gen 11: 4).  It is human projects, even our projects, made at the service of an ever greater "I", towards a heaven where there is no more room for God. God lets us do it for a while, so that we can experience until what point of evil and sadness we are able to achieve without Him ... But the Spirit of Christ, Lord of history, is looking forward to overturning everything up, to make us start over!  We are always a little "narrow" in our vision and heart;  left to ourselves we end up losing sight of the horizon;  we even convince ourselves that we have understood everything, to have taken all the variables into consideration, to have foreseen what will happen and how it will happen ... They are all our constructions that delude themselves into touching heaven.  Instead the Spirit bursts into the world from above, from the womb of God, there where the Son was begotten, and makes all things new ".

Let us then take the Spirit by the hand, the Pope concludes, "and bring it to the heart of the city to hear its cry, its groan.  To Moses God says that this hidden cry of the People has reached Him: He heard it, He saw oppression and suffering ... And He decided to intervene by sending Moses to arouse and nourish the dream of freedom of the Israelites and reveal to them  that this dream is His own will: to make of Israel a free People, its People, bound to Him by a covenant of love, called to bear witness to the Lord's fidelity to all peoples.  But for Moses to be able to fulfill his mission, God wants him to "descend" with him in the midst of the Israelites.  The heart of Moses must become like that of God, attentive and sensitive to the sufferings and dreams of men, to that which they cry in secret when they raise their hands towards Heaven, because they no longer have any holdings on earth ".