During the general audience on Wednesday 16 August, the Ho1y Father gave the thirteenth catechesis in the current series on Pentecost.

1. On the day of Pentecost at Jerusalem, the apostles, and with them the first community of Christ’s disciples, assembled in the Upper Room together with Mary, the Mother of the Lord, received the Holy Spirit. Thus the promise, which Christ made to them when he left this world to return to the Father, was fulfilled for them. On that day the Church, which had her origins in the Redeemer’s death, was revealed to the world. I shall speak about this in the next catechesis. 

Now I would like to show that the coming of the Holy Spirit, as the fulfillment of the New Covenant "in Christ’s blood", gives rise to the new people of God. This is the community of those who have been "sanctified in Christ Jesus" (1 Cor 1:2); those from whom Christ has made "a kingdom, priests to his God and Father" (Apoc 1:6; cf. 5:10;1 Pet 2:9). All this happened by virtue of the Holy Spirit.

2. In order to grasp fully the significance of this truth, announced by the Apostles Peter and Paul and by the Apocalypse, we must return for a moment to the establishing of the Old Covenant between the Lord God and Israel, represented by its leader, Moses, after the liberation from the slavery of Egypt. The texts which speak of it indicate clearly that the strict Covenant then was not reduced to a mere pact founded on bilateral duties; it is the Lord God who chooses Israel as his people, so that the people become his property, while he himself will be "their God" from then onwards. 

Thus we read: "Now therefore, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples; for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Ex 19:5-6). What God proclaims in Exodus, we find repeated and confirmed in the Book of Deuteronomy. "For you (Israel) are a people holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the earth" (Deut 7:6; cf. 26:18). (Incidentally, we may note that the expression "sequllah" means "the king’s personal treasure").

3. Such a choice on God’s part derives totally and exclusively from his love, a completely gratuitous love. We read: "It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love upon you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples; but it is because the Lord loves you, and is keeping the oath which he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage" (Deut 7:7-8). The Book of Exodus expresses the same thing in picturesque language: "You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself" (Ex l9:4).

God acts out of gratuitous love. This love binds Israel to the Lord God in a particular and exceptional way. Through it Israel became God’s property. Yet such love requires a return, and therefore a response of love on Israel’s part: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart" (Deut 6:5).

4. Thus in the Covenant a new people, the People of God, come into being. Being the "property" of the Lord God means being "consecrated" to him, being a " "holy people". It is what the Lord God makes known to the entire community of the Israelites through Moses: "You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy" (Lev 19:2). By that very choice God gave himself to his people in that which is most characteristic of him, holiness, and he asks it from Israel as a quality of life.

As a people "consecrated" to God, Israel is called to be "a priestly people": "You shall be called the priests of the Lord; men shall speak of you as ministers of our God" (Is 61:6).

5. The New Covenant—new and eternal—comes strictly "in Christ’s blood" (cf. 1 Cor 11:25). By virtue of this sacrifice, the "new Counsellor" (Parakletos) (cf. Jn 14:16) —the Holy Spirit—is given to thosewho are "sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints" (1 Cor 1:2). "To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints" (Rom 1:7), as St Paul writes when addressing his Letter to the Christians of Rome. He expresses himself similarly to the Corinthians: "To the Church of God which is at Corinth, with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia" (2 Cor 1:1); to the Philippians: "To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi" (Phil 1:1); to the Colossians: "To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ at Colossae" (Col 1:2); or to those of Ephesus: "To the saints who are at Ephesus" (Eph 1:1).

We find the same mode of expression in the Acts of the Apostles: "Peter... came down also to the saints that lived at Lydda" (Acts 9:32; cf. 9:41; also 9:13 "to thy saints at Jerusalem").

All these cases refer to Christians, or to the "faithful", that is, to the brethren who have received the Holy Spirit. It is precisely he, the Holy Spirit, the direct Builder of that holiness upon which, through participation in the holiness of God himself, the whole Christian life is built: "You were sanctified... in the Spirit of our God" (1 Cor 6:11; cf. 2 Thess 2:13; l Pet 1:2).

6. The same must be said of the consecration which, in virtue of the Holy Spirit, causes the baptized to become "a kingdom, priests to his God and Father" (cf. Apoc 1:6; 5:10; 20:6). The First Letter of Peter fully develops this truth: "Like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (I Pet 2:5). "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light" (1 Pet 2:9). We know that "it was revealed to them" with the voice of the Gospel "through the Holy Spirit sent from heaven" (1 Pet 1:12).

7. The Constitution Lumen Gentium of the Second Vatican Council expressed this truth in the following words: "Christ the Lord, high priest taken from among men (cf. Heb 5:1-5), made the new people ‘a kingdom of priests to God, his Father’ (Apoc 1:6; cf. 5:9-10). The baptized, by regeneration arid the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are consecrated to be a spiritual house and a holy priesthood, that through all the works of Christians they may offer spiritual sacrifices and proclaim the perfection of him who has called them out of darkness into his marvellous light (cf. 1 Pet 2:4-10)" (n. 10).

Here we arrive at the very essence of the Church as "People of God" and community of saints, to which we shall return in the next catechesis. However, the texts quoted clarify already that the "unction", that is, the power and action of the Holy Spirit, is expressed in the condition of holiness and consecration of the "new people".