Pope Francis: Living the fruits of the Holy Spirit helps us spread holiness

Vatican City, Aug 21, 2024 / 07:00 am

Pope Francis said Wednesday the person who lives with joy his anointing in the sacrament of confirmation cannot help but spread the fragrance of holiness in the Church and the world.

“We know that, unfortunately, sometimes Christians do not spread the fragrance of Christ but the bad odor of their own sin,” the pope also warned during the general audience Aug. 21, adding that “sin turns us into bad oil.”

During his weekly public audience in the Vatican’s Pope Paul VI Hall, Pope Francis continued a series of lessons on the Holy Spirit, focusing on the fruits of being anointed with the blessed oil called chrism in the sacraments of baptism and confirmation.

The audience hall brimmed over with thousands of pilgrims from around the world, some of whom held flags from their countries or waved colored bandanas, eager to catch a sight of the pope.

At the end of the meeting, before praying the Our Father and giving his blessing, the pontiff remembered certain countries and territories experiencing war, including Ukraine, Myanmar, South Sudan, and the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“Let us pray for peace,” he said, “and let’s not forget Palestine and Israel, that there will be peace there.”

In his catechesis, Pope Francis recalled the baptism of Christ, when “the very Spirit descended on Jesus.”

Christians, he explained, are “anointed in imitation of Christ,” as St. Cyril of Jerusalem wrote in his Mystagogical Catecheses.

The pope recited the prayer said by the bishop when he consecrates the chrism oil on Holy Thursday: “May those formed into a temple of your majesty by the holiness infused through this anointing and by the cleansing of the stain of their first birth be made fragrant with the innocence of a life pleasing to you.”

“A person who lives his anointing with joy gives fragrance to the Church, gives fragrance to the community, gives fragrance to his family,” the pontiff said.

Quoting from St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, Francis said: “The fragrance of Christ emanates from the ‘fruits of the Spirit,’ which are ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.’”

“It’s beautiful to find a good person, a faithful person, a meek person, not proud,” he commented.

Sin, the pope emphasized, “must not distract us from the commitment of realizing, as far as we are able and each in their own environment, this sublime vocation of being the good fragrance of Christ in the world.”

“Let us ask the Holy Spirit to make us more conscious [of being] anointed, anointed by him,” he concluded.