Holy Spirit, with Your gifts that You sink into our souls, You want to bring forth all the fruits that we contemplate in these days before we celebrate the feast of Your coming in the Church. They are true fruits that make our lives bright, they are expressions of Your love and help us to relate to each other as human beings in the incomparable way that Jesus said to His disciples:
“May they all be one, just as, Father, you are in me and I am in you, so that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe it was you who sent me. I have given them the glory you gave to me, that they may be one as we are one. With me in them and you in me, may they be so perfected in unity that the world will recognise that it was you who sent me and that you have loved them as you have loved me” (Jn 17:21-23).
We should live as human beings, Holy Spirit, in true unity with You and with each other. But obviously we are not really able to do this, as one can easily see if one does not close one’s eyes and dreams instead. Therefore, we must advance to the source of love and goodness and drink from it: You Yourself are this source!
When Your fruits grow in us, O Holy Spirit, then people will not only hear that love and goodness exist, but they will be able to encounter them in us. Everyone will humbly testify that although we can do good, we are not good out of ourselves, but that it is Your goodness that can grow and mature in us. But if it grows and becomes effective as a fruit in us, then we can agree with Albert Schweizer’s words:
“Constant goodness is capable of much. Just as the sun melts the ice, it makes misunderstandings, mistrust and hostility disappear. What a man puts out into the world in goodness, works on the hearts and minds of men.”
It is indeed true that when this wonderful fruit gives its warmth, one encounters mercy, that wonderful quality of God that allows us to live and always lifts us up. It is difficult to resist a benevolent person, and one’s heart must be very closed if it no longer allows itself to be touched by it! For goodness is able to melt the ice that often lies around our hearts, for this attitude is not only sometimes good, but it is a basic disposition of the heart, a fine nobility, which includes benevolence, the affirmation of the other person and generosity.
People like to associate a person’s goodness with growing age. But this is not always true, for goodness grows as a fruit of the Spirit, perhaps even as a particularly mature fruit of the Spirit after a long journey of inner purification.
Like all these wonderful fruits, O Holy Spirit, goodness serves to glorify God and makes something of His Being present. At the same time, these fruits also always serve people, for who would not be blessed by the friendliness, the true peace, the pure heart and the goodness.
So then, beloved Holy Spirit, you want to glorify the Lord through these fruits and call man to become what God intended him to be.
