+ Crescenzio Sepe

"The spirit renders Christian action God-like, in harmony, that is, with God's way of thinking, loving and acting, so that the believer becomes a visible sign of the Blessed Trinity in the world".

In the Letter to priests for Holy Thursday, John Paul II presents a profound meditation on the Holy Spirit and on the influence exercised by his gifts ("the sevenfold gift") upon the life of Man.

Through the Spirit "who leads us into the life of the Trinity" we are completely immersed also in the essential nucleus of the Great Jubilee, in the relationship between the Jubilee and the world and between the ecclesial event and the human reality that meet in a solemn convergence of time. The two thousand years since the coming of Christ are, in fact, an ever-open horizon in the history of humanity, in which the Christian sign contains the dusk and dawn of a whole millennium.

With regard to the time that still separates us from the Great Jubilee of the year 2000, together with its urgency, we perceive more and more - almost to mitigate its inevitable harshness - the ineffable and sovereign lordship the Holy Spirit exercises in the hearts of each person and especially in the hearts of those who are preparing themselves - and who prepare - to make all men and women look more vigorously and fruitfully towards the Third Christian millennium.

The Holy Spirit helps us to look through the eyes of the soul at what escapes our human eyes. In fact, no horizon is so vast as not to be reached by the breath of the Consoler.

We all need to move freely in these dimensions in order to find ourselves deep down. Humankind cannot drift around for vague destinations, nor can it count time only in days.

Yes indeed: the Holy Spirit is a ray of hope that fills and pervades everything. He is the Church at work in the world.

The great Jubilee cannot but live and take life from the breath of the Spirit. Every other form is merely pure and simple subsistence.

Easter, which we have just a celebrated, makes the presence and guidance of the Spirit even more alive and vibrant in the commitments and prospects that lead us towards the threshold of the Holy Door.

And, with regard to time, we must take into account that in the journey towards the Jubilee Year, the Easter of 1999 is the last great threshold that leads to the Door of the millennium.

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One section of the review is devoted to the February meeting in the Vatican between the Central Committee and the Delegates of the Episcopal Conferences (about 130 all over the world).

It was a key appointment in the path of preparation for the Great Jubilee of the year 2000.

The nature of the meeting - an extensive confrontation with the participation of representatives from the five Continents on pastoral themes, initiatives and programmes relating not only to this year, but to the whole of 1999 - does not allow a complete report.

But what deserves to be stressed is the conviction, which clearly emerged, that preparation for the Jubilee is a concrete reality which more and more progressively is being recognized in the various communities.

At the beginning of the introductory report I had spoken of an "underground river" to indicate the flow of activities. After a new stretch of the journey, perhaps the image should be corrected: the river is no longer so much underground, but it swells more and more every day as we approach the great Jubilee.

And in this, too, we see at work the breath of the Holy Spirit.