The Pope gave this reflection on the person o/ the Holy Spirit during the general audience on 29 August.

Missionary paradigm provides the key

1. After His resurrection, Jesus appeared to the 11 Apostles and said to them: "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father anal of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Mt 28:19). It is the Apostle-Evangelist Matthew who tells us, at the end of his Gospel, about this order by which Jesus Christ sends His Apostles into the whole world that they might be His witnesses and to continue His work of salvation. Our Christian tradition, according to which Baptism is administered in the name of the Blessed Trinity, corresponds to these words. However, Matthew's text contains something else we can consider as the last word of the revelation of the truth about the Trinity, including the revelation of the Holy Spirit as a Person who is equal to the Father and the Son, of one substance with them in the unity of the divinity.

This revelation belongs to the New Testament. In the Old Testament the Spirit of God, in the various ways of acting which were pointed out in our preceding reflections, was the manifestation of God's power, wisdom and holiness. In the New Testament we clearly make the transition to the revelation of the Holy Spirit as a Person.

2. In fact, the Gospel expression in Mt 28:19 clearly reveals the Holy Spirit as a Person because it names Him in the identical way as the other two Persons, without indicating any difference in this regard: "the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit". Matthew's Gospel clearly shows that the Father and Son are two distinct persons: "the Father" is the one whom Jesus calls "My heavenly Father" (Mt 15:13; 16:17; 18:35); "the Son" is Jesus Himself, designated as such by a voice which came from heaven at the time of His baptism (Mt 3:17) and His transfiguration (Mt 17:5), and acknowledged by Simon Peter as "the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Mt 16:16). Now a third Person, the "Holy Spirit", is associated to these two divine Persons in an identical way. This association is made even closer by the fact that the expression speaks of the name of these Three, prescribing that they baptize all nations "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit". In the Bible the expression "in the name of " is not usually used to refer to anything other than persons. It is also noteworthy that the Gospel's expression uses the term "name" in the singular, even though it mentions several persons. From all of this we have the undeniable result that the Holy Spirit is a third divine Person, closely associated to the Father and the Son in the unity of a single divine "name".

Christian Baptism puts us in close personal relationship with the three divine Persons, thus introducing us into the intimacy of the Godhead. Every time we make the Sign of the Cross we repeat this Gospel expression in order to renew our relationship with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Acknowledging the Holy Spirit is an essential condition for the Christian life of faith and charity.

3. The Risen Christ's words about Baptism (Mt 28:19) do not occur without some preparation in Matthew's Gospel. In fact they have a relationship to the baptism of Jesus Himself, in which there was a trinitarian theophany: Matthew tells us that, when Jesus came up out of the water, "the heavens were opened and they saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon Him. And a voice came from the heavens, saying, 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased' "(Mt 3:16-17). The same scene is described similarly by the other two synoptics (Mk 1:9-11;Lk 3:21-22). In it we find a revelation of the three divine Persons: the person of Jesus is indicated with the designation of Son; the person of the Father is manifested through the voice which says, "This is my... Son"; and the person of the Spirit of God appears as distinct from the Father and the Son and in relationship to both of them; with the heavenly Father, because the Spirit comes from on high, and with the Son, because the Spirit came upon Him. If, at a first glance, this interpretation does not seem convincing, a comparison of it with the closing phrase of the Gospel (Mt 28:19) assures its foundation.

4. The light which we are given by Matthew's final phrase allows us to discover the person-hood of the Holy Spirit in other texts. The revelation of the Spirit in His relationship with the Father and the Son can also be deduced in the account of the Annunciation (Lk l:26-38).

According to Luke's narrative, the angel Gabriel, sent by God to a virgin named Mary, announced the will of the Eternal Father to her in the following words: "Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a Son, and you shall name Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High" (Lk 1: 32-32). And when Mary asked how this could happen in her virginal condition, the angel replied to her: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God" (Lk 1:34-35).

Of itself, this text does not tell us that the Holy Spirit is a Person; it merely shows that He is a being in some way distinct from the Most High, that is from God the Father, and from the Son of the Most High. When it is read, however, as we spontaneously do in the light of faith "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Mt 28:19), it reveals to us the unity of the three divine Persons in the fulfillment of the mystery which is called the incarnation of the Word. The Person of the Holy Spirit contributes to this fulfillment according to the Father's plan, which is fully accepted by the Son. By the power of the Holy Spirit the Son of God, one in nature with the eternal Father, is conceived as a man and born of the Virgin Mary. In the preceding reflections we have already spoken of this mystery which is both Christological and pneumatological. Here we need only recall that in the event of the Annunciation the trinitarian mystery is revealed, especially the Person of the Holy Spirit.

5. At this point we can also point out a reflection of this mystery on Christian anthropology. There is, in fact, a connection between the birth of the eternal Son of God in human nature and the "rebirth" of the sons and daughters of humankind by divine adoption through grace. This connection belongs to the economy of salvation. In view of this, in the sacramental economy Baptism was instituted.

Therefore the revelation of the Holy Spirit as a subsistent Person in the trinitarian unity of the Godhead is particularly highlighted both in the mystery of the Incarnation of the eternal Son of God and in the mystery of the divine "adoption" of the sons and daughters of humankind. In this mystery John's proclamation about Christ at the Jordan is constantly fulfilled: "He will baptize with the Holy Spirit" (Mt 3:11). This supernatural "adoption", in fact, is brought about in the sacramental order precisely through baptism "with water and the Spirit" (Jn 3:5).