The Spirit and the Signs of the Times

25 September 1998 07:41

VATICAN CITY, SEP 23, 1998 – In today’s General Audience in St. Peter’s Square, John Paul II coninued his catechesis on the Holy Spirit when he spoke on “The Spirit and the Signs of the Times.”

“The Church,” said the Pope, “recognizes that only the Holy Spirit, imprinting the living image of the Son of God made man on the hearts of the faithful, can make them capable of carefully examining history and discovering the signs and presence of God in it.”

The Holy Father recalled that the Second Vatican Council designates as “signs of the times” those “significant indications of the presence and action of the Spirit of God in history. … In the perspective of the Christian faith, the invitation to discern the signs of the times corresponds to the new eschatological event introduced in history through the coming of the Logos (the Word) among us.”

“In Jesus crucified,” he continued, “there occurs a transformation and concentration of the signs: He himself is the ‘sign of God’, particularly in the mystery of His death and resurrection. In order to discern the signs of His presence in history, we must free ourselves from all worldly pretensions and welcome the Spirit who ‘searches everything, even the depths of God’.”

Lastly, the Holy Father said that “the providential nature of the signs of the times, first hidden in the secret of the Father’s plan, erupted in history … in the paradoxical sign of the crucified and risen Son.” And now, this is interpreted by Christians “in the watchful and operative hope of the final coming, which will bring history to its fulfillment, beyond itself, in the Father’s heart.”