Word of Life

June 2007

We have a treasure within: the voice of the Holy Spirit. If we live in unity with one another that voice will be amplified and we can be transformed.

The Spirit of truth … will guide you into all the truth. (John 16: 13)

The Gospel is powerfully appealing with its words of truth. In it, the One who said ‘I am the Truth’ (John 14: 6) speaks to us. He spreads out before us the infinite mystery of God and makes us understand his plan of love for humanity; he gives the Truth.

But the Truth has the infinite depth of mystery. How can we understand and live it fully? Jesus himself knows that we are not able to carry its ‘weight’. This is why during the last supper with his disciples, before returning to the Father, he promised to send his own Spirit who would explain his words to us and help us live them.

The Spirit of truth … will guide you into all the truth.

The community of believers knows the truth because it lives in Jesus. At the same time, it is on a journey towards ‘the fullness of truth’, under the sure guidance of the Spirit.

The story of the Church can be read as the story of the gradual and ever deeper understanding of the mystery of Jesus and his Word. The Spirit leads it along this journey in many ways: through the contemplation and study of believers, through the particular gifts of holy people, through the teachings of the Church.

The Spirit also speaks to the heart of each believer, where he dwells, making his ‘voice’ heard. From time to time he suggests that we forgive, serve, give, love. He teaches us what is good and what is evil. He reminds us of the Word of Life, which the Gospel sows in us every month, and helps us to live it.

The Spirit of truth … will guide you into all the truth.

How should we live this Word of Life? By listening to that ‘voice’ within us, by being obedient to the Holy Spirit who guides, exhorts and urges us on.

We should move according to the promptings of the Spirit, so that the Spirit can work in our hearts with his creative power and lead us to holiness, to divinization and resurrection.

To understand that ‘voice’ better, almost to amplify it, we can live in unity with each other. In this way we learn how to listen not only to the voice of the Spirit within, but also to his voice present among us united in the Risen Lord.

The Spirit, when we have Jesus among us, perfects our listening to his voice within. In fact, Jesus present among us is like a loudspeaker of the voice of the Spirit within. As has been said:
‘It has always seemed to us that the best way to love the Holy Spirit, to honour him, to keep him alive in our hearts, is really to listen to his voice, which can shed light on us every instant of our lives … By listening to that voice, we have experienced with great surprise how we progress in perfection: little by little faults disappear and virtues begin to stand out.’1

The Spirit of truth … will guide you into all the truth.

This Word of Life, which comes from the Gospel read by many Christians on Trinity Sunday, invites us to pray to the Holy Spirit:

‘O Holy Spirit, we do not ask of you anything but God for God… Grant that we may live the rest of our lives – we implore you – only and always and in every instant for you alone, who alone we wish to love and serve.
‘God! God, pure spirit, for whom our humanity can be an empty chalice to be filled…

‘God, who must shine through our being, our hearts, our faces, our words, our actions, our silence, our living, our dying…

‘After our departure from this earth may we leave only a luminous streak of his presence.’2

Fabio Ciardi and Gabriella Fallacara

1 Chiara Lubich, The Holy Spirit and the Focolare Movement, unpublished talk, October 1989.
2 Chiara Lubich, Essential Writings, New City, London 2007, pp. 148-149 (adapted)