Holy Spirit Encyclical (cont'd) - Part II -Section 6, paragraph 48

[MariaChristi]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today we conclude Part II, with paragraph 48:

1. In his farewell discourse Jesus linked these three areas of “convincing” as elements of the mission of the Paraclete: sin, righteousness and judgment. They mark out the area of that mysterium pietatis that in human history is opposed to sin, to the mystery of iniquity.189 On the one hand, as St. Augustine says, there is “love of self to the point of contempt of God”; on the other, "love-of God to the point of contempt of self."190 The Church constantly lifts up her prayer and renders her service in order that the history of consciences and the history of societies in the great human family will not descend toward the pole of sin, by the rejection of God’s commandments “to the point of contempt of God,” but rather will rise toward the love in which the Spirit that gives life is revealed.

Those who let themselves be “convinced concerning sin” by the Holy Spirit, also allow themselves to be convinced “concerning righteousness and judgment.” The Spirit of truth who helps human beings, human consciences, to know the truth concerning sin, at the same time enables them to know the truth about that righteousness which entered human history in Jesus Christ. In this way, those who are “convinced concerning sin” and who are converted through the action of the Counselor are, in a sense, led out of the range of the “judgment” that “judgment” by which "the ruler of this world is judged."191 In the depths of its divine-human mystery, conversion means the breaking of every fetter by which sin binds man to the whole of the mystery of iniquity.

Those who are converted, therefore, are led by the Holy Spirit out of the range of the “judgment,” and introduced into that righteousness which is in Christ Jesus, and is in him precisely because he receives it from the Father,192 as a reflection of the holiness of the Trinity. This is the righteousness of the Gospel and of the Redemption, the righteousness of the Sermon on the Mount and of the Cross, which effects the purifying of the conscience through the Blood of the Lamb. It is the righteousness which the Father gives to the Son and to all those united with him in truth and in love.

In this righteousness the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Father and the Son, who “convinces the world concerning sin,” reveals himself and makes himself present in man as the Spirit of eternal life.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit!