The year 1998 is one of three years dedicated to preparing for the great Jubilee of 2000, and it is consecrated to the Holy Spirit. In his customary pastoral letter to the Ambrosian Church, presented here, Cardinal Martini invites us to meditate and examine ourselves regarding the gifts of the Consoler. The path is clear and simple; the work of reflection and searching will guide us for years to come and can transform our lives.
The book unfolds in three parts. In the first, the author recounts a personal experience from 1970. He was forty-three years old. During that period he taught a course on the Acts of the Apostles at the University of San Francisco, in California. As the lectures proceeded, a question emerged within him with increasing clarity: "Where do we find authentic experiences of the Spirit in our time, like those of the early Christians? Where, how, and when do the conditions exist for a man or woman, even touched by secularism, to cry out: 'Truly God is among you!'?" The book is his answer to that question. For Cardinal Martini the search continued through the years that followed and became an ever-deeper conviction: "The Spirit is here, even today, as in the time of Jesus and the Apostles: present and at work, arriving before us, laboring more than us and better than us; our task is not to sow the Spirit or awaken it, but above all to recognize it, welcome it, follow its lead, clear the way for it, go after it."
With the authority, experience, and sensitivity that mark him, the Cardinal bears witness to this in his letter. Just as in the stories of Scripture the work of the Holy Spirit manifests itself in the lives of people and peoples, so today the same Spirit "truly touches our hearts, disturbs us, consoles us, opens us to the great Mystery." The author writes: "I became a witness to countless quiet journeys of known and unknown people, beginning even with chance encounters. I was struck, for instance, by discovering how much hidden goodness there was in so many sick people, in elderly people living alone, in families who, without fanfare, care for disabled children and adolescents with heroism and shower them with affection. I still remember the words that came to me unbidden when I stood before a young man gravely ill, near death: here the risen Jesus is at work! I was moved by the openness of heart of so many prisoners, the willingness and profound questions about meaning from so many young people. I saw with admiration the growing hunger for silence, for extended times of prayer, for a desire to be with the poor, for hunger for the Word of God."
In the third part of the book, Cardinal Martini explains the action of the Consoler's gifts—Understanding, Knowledge, Counsel, Fear of God, Fortitude, Wisdom, Piety—and their connection with the theological virtues and the Beatitudes. Here he invites us to examine our personal and communal lives. How do we welcome the Spirit and remain close to it? In what ways do we resist and lose heart? Do we continue, perhaps without knowing it, on a path at whose center we place our own self-centeredness, or do we make ourselves its instruments in our families and communities, in the Church and in the world?
"The real stake is openness to the invisible, it is encounter with the Transcendent, it is meeting the Spirit who is Lord and gives life and can awaken God's newness even in the most closed, weighed-down, or hardened heart or environment."
N.L., 1998
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