Pope Leone opens the general chapter of the Order of Agostino number 188. He does it with the mass celebrated in Campo Marzio. A short and dense homily that, starting from Pentecost, explains the fruits of the Holy Spirit. The unit, first of all, that Pope Prevost never fails to indicate as a goal. The Pontiff wishes, that the Holy Spirit is the true protagonist of the chapter that will lead to the election of the new general prior. “We ask the Lord,” he says, “that his spirit has the upper hand over every human logic, in a” abundant and irresistible “way”. And he explains that it is important that in the chapter there is an atmosphere of listening, of others and of God. He returns to “our Father Agostino” reminding that, when in a provocative way they asked him why today the extraordinary sign of the “” glossolalia “no longer repeats himself, makes a reflection that I think can return to you very useful in the mandate you are about to do. He says: “At first each faithful (…) spoke all the languages (…). Now the set of believers speak in all languages. Therefore even now all the languages are ours, since we are members of the body that speaks” ».
And therefore, addressing his confreres, he explains that it is days when a sincere effort must be made to “communicate and understand”. An effort made with humility. “Sant’Agostino, commenting on the variety of ways in which the Holy Spirit, over the centuries, has pushed up on the world, reads this multiplicity as an invitation for us to make us small in the face of the freedom and impersonalability of God’s action”. Nobody, warns “you think you have all the answers. Each shares with opening what he has. Everyone welcomes with faith what the Lord inspires, in the awareness that “how much the sky dominates the earth” both its ways above our ways and his thoughts our thoughts. Only in this way can the spirit “teach” and “remember” what Jesus said, affecting him in your hearts because from them the echo has spread in the uniqueness and unrepeatability of every beat “.
Leone concludes by underlining once again the value of the unit. “In the first reading St. Paul, speaking of the Corinth Community, makes it a description that can be easily applied to this assembly,” he comments. “Even here, in fact” each one is given a particular manifestation of the spirit for the common good “, also here” all these things works the only and same spirit, distributing them to everyone as they want “and it can also be said that” how (…) the body is only one and has many limbs, and all the limbs of the body, despite being many, are a single body, so also the Christ “. Unit is an indispensable object of your efforts, but not only: it is also the criterion of verifying your action and working together, because what unites is from him, but what divides cannot be.
In fact, explained Sant’Agostino, the unity is a sign of the presence of the Lord: “As in fact spiritual men enjoy unity, carnal ones always seek contrasts”.
The three suggestions, for the chapter, therefore, are “listening, humility and unity”. The invitation, says Leone, “is to make them yours, renewing the prayer that we addressed to the Lord at the beginning of this celebration:” The Paracolito spirit, which proceeds from you, or Father, illuminate our minds and, according to the promise of your son, guide us to the whole truth “”.
