ARCHDIOCESE OF PHILADELPHIA

Dear Father Rector and brother Priests,
Dear Faculty,
Dear Seminarians,

This is a wonderful moment in the history and life of the Church in Philadelphia and in all the other Dioceses and religious congregations represented here today at Saint Charles Seminary. Our seminarians have come here in order to enter into a deeper phase of love and union with Jesus Christ, who is undoubtedly speaking to their hearts and who seems to be calling them to His sacred priesthood.

In order for our seminarians, indeed for all of us, to enter into deeper love and union with Jesus Christ, it is necessary to accept and embrace the promised Holy Spirit of the Father. Jesus Himself told the Apostles: "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you." In God's great plan of salvation, Jesus sends us the Holy Spirit, who in turn by His power leads us to Jesus and configures us to Him.

And because the Seminary is all about Jesus Christ, His priesthood and His mission, we begin this new academic year of grace and peace by invoking the Holy Spirit in this votive Mass that we are celebrating this afternoon. Jesus is indeed asking these young men to enter more deeply into the love of His Sacred Heart and to be witnesses, in a very special way, of this love. And in order that they may be able to do this, Jesus is offering them, in abundant measure, His Holy Spirit.

Jesus also desires to reveal through the Holy Spirit the fullness of Trinitarian love. For this reason, He told the Apostles: ".it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.. But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth."

Hence, to know Jesus and His truth, we turn to the Holy Spirit and, even as we endeavor to understand more fully the role He plays in the Most Blessed Trinity, we invoke Him, praying: "Come, Holy Spirit!"

From all eternity we know that God lives in the communion of Three Divine Persons: the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We know that the Holy Spirit, as the Love of the Father and the Son, brings to completion the cycle of the divine life. Hence, whatever is a work of completion and perfection, a work of holiness and love, like seminary formation, is "attributed" to the Holy Spirit. In this way the Church expresses her faith, proclaiming the life of the Most Blessed Trinity and the place that the Third Person, the Holy Spirit, holds in the communion of God's intimate life.

Not only does the Church use this form of "attributing" an external work of God to one Person in the Most Blessed Trinity, but this form is also found in the Scriptures. It is likewise used by Jesus Himself.

The Holy Spirit then in the Church, as the Love of the Father and the Son-Love that is identical with Life in the Trinity-is called the Giver of Life. The Holy Spirit is also looked upon as the supreme source of unity in the Church-unity which is a gift of perfection in the community of Christ's disciples. The Holy Spirit is also called by Jesus the Counselor of the Apostles, the Advocate. It is He who guarantees that the teaching of Jesus will be understood. It is He who actually bears witness to Jesus in the world. From the entire life of the Church we know that the reason Jesus sent the Holy Spirit is so that the Holy Spirit may form Jesus in us. The role of the Holy Spirit in the Church is to enable us to participate in the filial relationship of Jesus to the Father.

In the Gospel of Saint John we read that the Father gives the Holy Spirit (cf. Jn 14:16). And we read again that the Father sends the Holy Spirit in the name of the Son (cf. Jn 4:26), and that the Spirit bears witness to the Son (cf. Jn 15:26). We likewise read that the Son asks the Father to send the Holy Spirit, and, as we have seen, Jesus speaks of Himself sending the Holy Spirit: "If I go, I will send him to you" (Jn 16:7).

Jesus made a point of telling the Apostles that it was advantageous for them that He should go away, in other words that He should return to the Father. His departure was the condition for the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Church at Pentecost (cf. Jn 16:7).

Jesus offers the Holy Spirit to the Church to dwell in the Church and to confirm the Church in her identification with Jesus. And so the gift that Jesus sends, together with His Father, remains in the Church for all generations to direct the activity of the Church, including seminary formation, and to help the Church fulfill her mission of sanctification in the world. The proclamation of the Gospel-the whole work of evangelization, according to the words of Jesus: "You will be my witnesses to all the world"-throughout the centuries will be directed, by the Holy Spirit described as "the finger of God's right hand".

Our mission today of evangelization, our activities of catechetics are all under the sovereign direction of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the principal evangelizer. Jesus acting in the power of the Holy Spirit evangelizes, catechizes and teaches through us; everything that is done in the name of Jesus is done through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Letter to the Hebrews will say that Jesus "through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God" (Heb 11:15) in sacrifice on the Cross.

It is very important to insist on the role of the Holy Spirit in evangelization in all its spheres, especially that of catechetics. Pope Paul VI spoke at length about the action of the Holy Spirit. He stated: "It must be said that the Holy Spirit is the principal agent in evangelization: it is he who impels each individual to proclaim the Gospel, and it is he who in the depths of consciences causes the word of salvation to be accepted and understood." Pope Paul VI went on: "The Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church. It is he who explains to the faithful the deep meaning of the teaching of Jesus and of his mystery. It is the Holy Spirit who, today just as at the beginning of the Church, acts in every evangelizer who allows himself to be possessed and led by him. The Holy Spirit places on his lips the words which he could not find by himself, and at the same time the Holy Spirit predisposes the soul of the hearer to be open and receptive to the good news and to the kingdom being proclaimed." Pope Paul VI then introduced a level of sobering realism and demanding humility by adding: "Techniques of evangelization are good but even the most advanced ones could not replace the gentle action of the Spirit. The most perfect preparation of the evangelizer has no effect without the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit the most convincing dialectic has no power over the heart of man. Without him the most highly developed schemes resting on a sociological or psychological basis are quickly seen to be quite valueless." He then concluded, saying: "It is not by chance that the great inauguration of evangelization took place on the morning of Pentecost under the inspiration of the Spirit" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 75).

As we look to the Holy Spirit, we must prayerfully reflect on His role in the Most Blessed Trinity, on the impact that the Holy Spirit had on Christ, on His activity in the Church and in our own souls here and now.

The Holy Spirit has different titles, some from Sacred Scripture, some from the piety of the Church. One of the titles by which the Church refers to Him is "the forgiveness of sins" (Ipse est remissio peccatorum).

What a special joy it is to proclaim that the forgiveness of sins is attributed to the Holy Spirit in the Church. Indeed, this act of God's mercy is identified with His Love and therefore with the Holy Spirit Himself. For this reason the Church can with complete accuracy call the Holy Spirit "the forgiveness of sins."

We are called frequently to meditate on sin, but we do this only in order to proclaim God's mercy and forgiveness. In honoring the Holy Spirit we proclaim that He is indeed the forgiveness of sins. The divine action of pardon or forgiveness is identified with His nature and attributed to His Person. Through the action of the Holy Sprit, we are able to proclaim that "where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more" (Rom 5: 20). When Jesus gave the Apostles the power to forgive sins, He first communicated to them the Holy Spirit, saying: "Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained" (John 20:22-23). What great confidence Jesus deserves for giving us the Holy Spirit to keep alive forgiveness in the Church and in our own lives! He deserves our response: Jesus, I trust in you! Jesus, we trust in you!

We also proclaim the power of the Holy Spirit to form Jesus ever more in each and every one of us, and then to sustain us in Christian living and in all the ideals of Christian discipleship proper to our own vocation.

In the Gospel we find a young man challenged by Jesus with a radical invitation. It is this: "Go, sell.give.come back and follow me" (Mt 19:21). The Gospel said that the young man was not up to the invitation: "He went away sad." You, dear seminarians, have accepted the invitation joyfully and are running the course. Perseverance is a great gift of the Holy Spirit. Today we proclaim His power to sustain you to the end!

In speaking about the Holy Spirit, I frequently evoke the memory of Pope Leo XIII. In the year 1897 Pope Leo wrote an encyclical on the Holy Spirit, called Divinum Illud. He was eighty-seven at the time and perceived that he was approaching death. Actually, he lived for another six years and died in 1903 at the age of ninety-three. But what was so important for Pope Leo was his action to consecrate to the Holy Spirit all the work of his long pontificate. In consecrating his service as Pope to the Holy Spirit, he prayed that the Holy Spirit would bring His work to fruitfulness and completion.

His was an act of piety toward the Holy Spirit, but also an act of faith in the doctrine of the Most Blessed Trinity. By "attributing" to the Holy Spirit whatever is a work of loving completion, we do not exclude the action of the Father and the Son. By no means. But we do recognize, by what the Church calls "attribution", the role that is peculiarly personal to the Holy Spirit. We proclaim the faith of the Church which teaches that in the Most Blessed Trinity the Holy Spirit is indeed the term of the divine operations. The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father, and the Holy Spirit is the expression of their love. In His Person the Holy Spirit brings to completion and perfection the cycle of the divine life. In her prayer the Church professes this mystery of God's Trinitarian life and "attributes" to the Holy Spirit those works which, while common to the Holy Trinity, express a relationship to the role which belongs exclusively to the Holy Spirit within the communion of the Most Blessed Trinity.

As Pope Leo XIII did, as the Church does, so we too today invoke the Holy Spirit and proclaim His role in the communion of the Three Divine Persons. In order to show this faith we consecrate to Him our activities and our life so that He will bring them to the perfection of Love and form Jesus in us!

We ask the Holy Spirit then to consummate us in His love. He is the Spirit of holiness who engenders holiness in us because He forms Jesus in us. As the Spirit of Jesus, He is the one that inculcates trust in us, the one who enables us to pronounce the holy name of Jesus, the one who enables us to proclaim our trust in Jesus, the one who makes it possible for us to say: "Jesus is Lord!" and Jesus, I trust in you! Jesus, we trust in you!

In acknowledging that the Holy Spirit can do all this, we invoke Him once again with our pentecostal prayer: Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love! Amen.