Fourteenth station

The Risen Christ sends the promised Spirit 

C. We adore you, Christ risen, and we bless you.
T.  For with your Easter you have given life to the world.

1L. From the Acts of the Apostles
When the day of Pentecost came, all the believers were gathered together in one place.  Suddenly there was a noise from the sky which sounded like a strong wind blowing, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.  Then they saw what looked like tongues of fire which spread out and touched each person there.  They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to talk in other languages, as the Spirit enabled them to speak.  There were Jews living in Jerusalem, religious men who had come from every country in the world.  When they heard this noise, a large crowd gathered.  They were all excited, because each one of them heard the believers talking in his own language (2,1-6).

2L.  Appointment kept:  not knock out to man, but o.k. to history.
The promised Spirit comes.  Like sure Love.  And it transforms everything it touches.  It touches the bosom of a virgin and she becomes a mother.  It touches a humiliated corpse and it rises.  It touches a bunch of men and they become a group of believers.  Ready for everything.  Up to martyrdom.  The new humanity starts its journey.  History begins to turn the right way.  "The Spirit rejuvenates," Paul exclaims, expert of this prodigy. 
Pentecost is perennial.  In today's world there are more than a billion youth from five to twenty-five years of age.   Spreading drugs, boredom, nausea, nonsense try to block the dawn in them.
Enthusiasm is fire, today more necessary, because it is a leap forward in a world flattened by mediocrity, because it is hope in a monotonous world without future.
Now Pentecost is fire, it is enthusiasm.
Let's recharge the batteries that do not work anymore.  The Spirit, that is the outburst of the Father and the Son, is the only true eternal source of a non-foolish enthusiasm.  And it comes to make us young, enthused with an only center:  Jesus has risen.  Here is the true "Archimedes' lever", like the young martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer said before being hung in the nazi lagers.  Man of the Holy Spirit, he wrote to his friend:  "Give me a leaning spot and I will lift the world for you.  Doing everything starting from resurrection:  that is what can change the world."
And another youth in love with Pentecost, Franco Del Piano, faced with death wrote his profession of faith to his friends:  "If despite it all we are optimistic it is because Christ has risen.  If I hope for a better world it is because Christ has risen.  If I am not afraid of myself anymore it is because Christ has risen."
Young friend, react to anguish, and look toward the light at the end of the tunnel.  Sitting on the ground, in the darkness of the tunnel, crying over one's own obscurity, without thinking about getting up to walk toward the light, would not make any sense.  The sun that sets today will rise even more beautiful tomorrow.  There's more future than past.  Always.  Night does not turn the sun off.  Death does not turn life off.
It is the Spirit that today tells the twenty-century-young Church and in it to the young in age and spirit:  its Easter becomes your Easter and may your Easter become seed of Easter in the world.
The Spirit transforms everything it touches:  it can fertilize the small seed of the passage from the sense of conflictuality to the style of conviviality.   With our commitment, everything, despite everything, will come to destination.  We will make it.
The little ones tell us:  "Give us a dream."  Let's keep the promise.  Let's make a bet.  Christ is a rock, and who delivers himself to Him is assured.  And it is feast at once. 
A flower can blossom even on rocky mountains.  Future has already begun:  it has the color of our Easter certainty.  It has the heat of our Pentecostal energy.
God doesn't put the solution to our problems in our hands.  But he gives us the hands to solve the problems.  Resurrection is the solution.  In his way.  Let's build together a world in which we can tell whoever comes, in the name of the Risen:  "Welcome to the home of the future."  And it is hope at once.

T.  Rejoice, Virgin Mother:  Christ is risen.  Hallelujah!

C.  Let us pray.  Oh Holy Spirit, you who incomparably unite the Father and the Son, you are the one who unites us to the risen Jesus, breath of our lives; you are the one who unites us to the Church, of which you are the soul, and we are the limb.  Like Saint Agostine, each one of us pleas you:  "Breathe in me, Holy Spirit, so that I may think that which is holy.  You push me, Holy Spirit, so that I may do that which is holy.  Attract me, so that I may love that which is holy.  Strengthen me, Holy Spirit, so that I may never lose what is holy."

T.  Amen.

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