Daily effort helps us be more open to the Holy Spirit

Pope's Morning Homily: 'Every Day, Another Step' Is Way to Reach Our Conversion

At Casa Santa Marta, Says We Must Make Constant Effort to Open Door to Holy Spirit

    

Rome, October 22, 2015 (ZENIT.org) Staff Reporter              

 

"Conversion is a duty" that takes daily effort, says Pope Francis, so that the door of our heart is opened more and more to the Holy Spirit.
The Pope made this point during his morning homily today at the Casa Santa Marta, reported Vatican Radio.
Pope Francis commented on the reading from St Paul to the Romans to emphasize that in order to pass from a life of iniquity to a life of sanctity, we must work at it every day.
Saint Paul, the Pope said, uses the image of the athlete, the man who “trains in order to prepare himself for game, and makes a great effort.”
Also in our effort to reach the victory of Heaven, Saint Paul, the Pope said, “exhorts us to go forward with this effort."
“Ah, Father, are we able to think that sanctification comes through the effort I make, like the victory that comes to sportsmen through training? No. The efforts we make, this daily work of serving the Lord with our soul, with our heart, with our body, with our whole life only opens the door to the Holy Spirit. It is He who enters into us and saves us! He is the gift in Jesus Christ! Otherwise, we would make ourselves like fakirs: No, we are not fakirs. We, with our efforts, open the door.”
Pope Francis acknowledged that this is a difficult task, “because our weakness, original sin, the devil” are always trying to get us to turn back. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews, he said, “warns us against this temptation to turn back”; he warns us “not to go back, not to fall.” We need to continue to go forward,“a little bit each day,” even “when there is great difficulty."
“A few months ago, I met a woman. Young, the mother of a family – a beautiful family – who had cancer. An ugly cancer. But she moved with happiness, she acted like she was healthy. And speaking about this attitude, she told me, 'Father, I would do anything to beat the cancer!' It’s that way with the Christian. We have received this gift in Jesus Christ and we have passed from sin, from the life of iniquity to the life of the gift in Jesus, in the Holy Spirit; we must do the same. Every day a step. Every day a step.”
Pope Francis pointed out some obstacles, such as the “desire to gossip." And in that case, he said, you need to make the effort to be silent. Otherwise, if we don’t work to overcome temptations, “there comes a little bit of slumber,” and we won’t have the “will to pray” - but then we try to pray a little bit anyway.
These small efforts, the Pope said, “help us not to fall, not to go back, not to return to iniquity but to go forward toward this gift, this promise of Jesus Christ which is precisely the encounter with Him. Let us ask this grace from the Lord: to be strong, to be strong in this training of life towards the encounter, that we might receive the gift of justification, the gift of grace, the gift of the Spirit in Christ Jesus.”