Where are we at? A «I believe in the Holy Spirit». To summarize: God before us in eternity is the Father. God with us (Emanuel) in history, who after having lived our life in his, suffered our death and anticipated in the Resurrection what is promised and given to us in eternal life went to prepare for us a place "where He too is" (Jn. 14,3) is the Son, eternal Word and Jesus of Nazareth, also son of Mary, also our mother. The Spirit was still missing…

But the Spirit not only "is Lord", but also "gives life". It already in the prefiguration of the First Testament "hovered over the waters" of the initial chaos and was "ruàh", the vital breath of every living creature, but in the fullness of the Revelation which is a gift from God himself over the centuries, evoked for. example at the beginning of the Letter to the Hebrews, there is the definitive mysterious donation of this Spirit himself, total creator and animator. It appears as the presence of God who fertilizes Mary's womb and who then, once the Gospels tell us everything, is given by Jesus himself as an "advocate" and "consoler", that is, He who ensures that we do not we are never alone. Jesus promised it to those poor people, bewildered sinners, amazed at his story and the events that after that "Supper", the last one, they had turbulently followed in 43 days, until the moment their eyes saw him. vanish while a voice from above exhorted them not to "stare looking at the sky", but to go towards the world, towards their brothers...

For this reason, 10 days later He arrived, the "Con/solator" who constituted them, almost consecrated them in a new "unity", them and the other few disciples, including "the women" who remained faithful, obviously with Her, his Mother whom John had "taken with him" in the name of all, but who in reality was the One to whom He, Jesus himself, had entrusted them as "children": "Behold your son!". From that moment on they are his Church. The mandate is the announcement and Baptism is the event that builds the Church, from then until today the prolonged presence of Jesus who died and rose again in the history of men, who walks through time and announces eternity...

Therefore, immediately after having affirmed faith in the "Holy Spirit who is Lord and gives life" we affirm that we believe "in the Church, one, holy and apostolic"...

The Church, therefore. In the definitive gift of the Holy Spirit to human history, the presence of the mystery of this entirely human and entirely divine reality in which God himself lives is formed: word, Eucharistic presence, reality of humanity, very similar image of God who walks through time and prepares the return of the Savior...

The Church is the vital environment in which the Spirit invades the creature in Baptism, the introduction of a new creature in the eyes of men, starting with the parents, but "dreamed" and prepared by Providence since the beginning of time itself...

The structure of the Church is a "sacramental" reality, from Baptism to eternal salvation. I remember - I have already lived long enough to remember - the extraordinary success of the theological book "Christ, the sacrament of the encounter with God", at the time of the Johannine "dream" of Vatican II, which later became reality and is still happily present as a goal for everyone today, with Francesco's smile and encouragement. Christ is visibly and explicitly alive in his Church which is constituted in fidelity to the Word by the dynamics of the Sacraments starting with the Baptism of water - of course - but also "of blood" and "of desire", as the Catechism has always stated, in where the anticipation of future developments is and always was contained in words that do not and will never belong to a true "past". 

The church? Yes. This Church? Yes. With all our defects as men? Yes. With its boundaries certainly not established by us, but by the "universal call to holiness" and salvation, as perhaps we have often forgotten by giving our boundaries to the Church, sometimes reduced to our image and likeness out of a desire to appropriate the same gift of God. This is why it may have happened that in the real history of the Catholic Church, universal in the divine plan, there have been human attempts - all ours - to limit the dimensions of the Church itself, but fortunately in the succession of eras and Councils there are were great warnings that surprised even the pretensions of us, little men of the Church...When Pius XII in the "Mystici Corporis", at the beginning of the 50s, said that many belonged to the "soul" of the Church who appeared not to be part of the visible "body" of the Institution there was a surprise - and sometimes in fearful churchmen who claimed to themselves give the boundaries to the infinite Mercy of God - even a certain scandal... This is also why Benedict XVI was able to say, smiling, in his “Light of the world” (p. 21) that "many who seem to be inside the Church are actually outside and many who seem to be outside are actually inside". This is the Church of Jesus, the Church for all men. And in this Church Baptism incorporated us into Jesus, and in this Church we received the announcement of Jesus, the gift of his Word, of his Presence. Thanks to the gift of the Holy Spirit we continue in the Creed and we can say: "I believe in the Church". Gift, privilege... and great responsibility. 

At the next meeting…