‘We were made to be God’s children,’ Pope preaches at Pentecost Mass

May 16, 2016

Pope Francis celebrated the Mass of Pentecost Sunday in St. Peter’s Basilica on May 15 and preached that “the central purpose of Jesus’ mission, which culminated in the gift of the Holy Spirit, was to renew our relationship with the Father, a relationship severed by sin.”

In doing so, Jesus “take[s] us from our state of being orphaned children,” Pope Francis emphasized. “The entire work of salvation is one of ‘re-generation,’ in which the Fatherhood of God, through the gift of the Son and the Holy Spirit, frees us from the condition of being orphans into which we had fallen.”

The Pope added:

In our own day also, we see various signs of our being orphans: in the interior loneliness which we feel even when we are surrounded by people, a loneliness which can become an existential sadness; in the attempt to be free of God, even if accompanied by a desire for his presence; in the all too common spiritual illiteracy which renders us incapable of prayer; in the difficulty in grasping the truth and reality of eternal life as that fullness of communion which begins on earth and reaches full flower after death; in the effort to see others as “brothers” and “sisters,” since we are children of the same Father.

 

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Further information:

• Mass of Pentecost - 2016.05.15 (YouTube Vatican)
• Santa Messa nella Solennità di Pentecoste (Holy See Press Office)
• Booklet for the Celebration (Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff)