The Spirit opens borders in our hearts, Pope Leo preaches on Pentecost Sunday

June 09, 2025

Citing a Pentecost homily by Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Leo emphasized in his own Pentecost Sunday homily on June 8 that the Holy Spirit “opens borders, first of all, in our hearts.”

“He is the Gift that opens our lives to love,” Pope Leo explained. “His presence breaks down our hardness of heart, our narrowness of mind, our selfishness, the fears that enchain us and the narcissism that makes us think only of ourselves. The Holy Spirit comes to challenge us, to make us confront the possibility that our lives are shrivelling up, trapped in the vortex of individualism.”

The Holy Spirit, the Pope continued, also “opens borders in our relationship with others” and “opens borders between peoples.” Referring to relationships with others, he said:

Jesus tells us that this Gift is the love between him and the Father that comes to dwell within us. We then become capable of opening our hearts to our brothers and sisters, overcoming our rigidity, moving beyond our fear of those who are different, and mastering the passions that stir within. The Spirit also transforms those deeper, hidden dangers that disturb our relationships, like suspicion, prejudice or the desire to manipulate others. I think too, with great pain, of those cases where relationships are marked by an unhealthy desire for domination, an attitude that often leads to violence, as is shown, tragically, by numerous recent cases of femicide.

In discussing how the Holy Spirit opens borders between peoples, the Pontiff said that

at Pentecost, the Apostles spoke the languages of those they met, and the confusion of Babel was finally resolved by the harmony brought about by the Spirit. Whenever God’s “breath” unites our hearts and makes us view others as our brothers and sisters, differences no longer become an occasion for division and conflict but rather a shared patrimony from which we can all draw, and which sets us all on journey together, in fraternity.

The Spirit breaks down barriers and tears down the walls of indifference and hatred because he “teaches us all things” and “reminds us of Jesus’ words” (cf. Jn 14:26). He teaches us, reminds us, and writes in our hearts before all else the commandment of love that the Lord has made the center and summit of everything. Where there is love, there is no room for prejudice, for “security” zones separating us from our neighbors, for the exclusionary mindset that, tragically, we now see emerging also in political nationalisms.

“Brothers and sisters, Pentecost renews the Church and the world! May the strong wind of the Spirit come upon us and within us, open the borders of our hearts, grant us the grace of encounter with God, enlarge the horizons of our love and sustain our efforts to build a world in which peace reigns,” Pope Leo concluded. “May Mary Most Holy, Woman of Pentecost, Virgin visited by the Spirit, Mother full of grace, accompany us and intercede for us.”

An estimated 70,000 pilgrims attended the Pentecost Sunday Mass, celebrated in Italian, with Latin Gregorian chant, in St. Peter’s Square (booklet, video). The Mass was the culmination of the June 7-8 Jubilee of Ecclesial Movements, Associations and New Communities, a celebration that was part of the 2025 jubilee year.

 

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Further information:

• Pentecost Sunday - Holy Mass (Dicastery for Communication - Libreria Editrice Vaticana)
• God's love breaks down walls, opens borders, dispels hatred, pope says (CNS)
• Pope on Pentecost: The Spirit shatters our inner chains and transforms us (Vatican News)