Conclusion

At the end of this apostolic exhortation, the gaze of my heart turns to Him who is the principle inspiring all catechetical work and all who do this work-the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, the Holy Spirit.

In describing the mission that this Spirit would have in the Church, Christ used the significant words: “He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”1 And He added: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth … he will declare to you the things that are to come.”2

The Spirit is thus promised to the Church and to each Christian as a teacher within, who, in the secret of the conscience and the heart, makes one understand what one has heard but was not capable of grasping: “Even now the Holy Spirit teaches the faithful,” said St. Augustine in this regard, “in accordance with each one’s spiritual capacity. And he sets their hearts aflame with greater desire according as each one progresses in the charity that makes him love what he already knows and desire what he has yet to know.”3

Furthermore, the Spirit’s mission is also to transform the disciples into witnesses to Christ: “He will bear witness to me; and you also are witnesses.”4

But this is not all. For St. Paul, who on this matter synthesizes a theology that is latent throughout the New Testament, it is the whole of one’s “being a Christian,” the whole of the Christian life, the new life of the children of God, that constitutes a life in accordance with the Spirit.5 Only the Spirit enables us to say to God: “Abba, Father.”6 Without the Spirit we cannot say: “Jesus is Lord.”7 From the Spirit come all the charisms that build up the Church, the community of Christians.8

In keeping with this, St. Paul gives each disciple of Christ the instruction: “Be filled with the Spirit.”9 St. Augustine is very explicit: “Both (our believing and our doing good) are ours because of the choice of our will, and yet both are gifts from the Spirit of faith and charity.”10

Catechesis, which is growth in faith and the maturing of Christian life towards its fullness, is consequently a work of the Holy Spirit, a work that He alone can initiate and sustain in the Church.

This realization, based on the text quoted above and on many other passages of the New Testament, convinces us of two things.

To begin with, it is clear that, when carrying out her mission of giving catechesis, the Church—and also every individual Christian devoting himself to that mission within the Church and in her name—must be very much aware of acting as a living, pliant instrument of the Holy Spirit. To invoke this Spirit constantly, to be in communion with Him, to endeavor to know His authentic inspirations must be the attitude of the teaching Church and of every catechist.

Secondly, the deep desire to understand better the Spirit’s action and to entrust oneself to Him more fully—at a time when “in the Church we are living an exceptionally favorable season of the Spirit,” as my predecessor Paul VI remarked in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi11—must bring about a catechetical awakening. For “renewal in the Spirit” will be authentic and will have real fruitfulness in the Church, not so much according as it gives rise to extraordinary charisms, but according as it leads the greatest possible number of the faithful, as they travel their daily paths, to make a humble, patient and persevering effort to know the mystery of Christ better and better, and to bear witness to it .

I invoke on the catechizing Church this Spirit of the Father and the Son, and I beg Him to renew catechetical dynamism in the Church.

May the Virgin of Pentecost obtain this for us through her intercession. By a unique vocation, she saw her Son Jesus “increase in wisdom and in stature, and in favor.”12 As He sat on her lap and later as He listened to her throughout the hidden life at Nazareth, this Son, who was “the only Son from the Father,” “full of grace and truth,” was formed by her in human knowledge of the Scriptures and of the history of God’s plan for His people, and in adoration of the Father.13 She in turn was the first of His disciples. She was the first in time, because even when she found her adolescent Son in the temple she received from Him lessons that she kept in her heart.14 She was the first disciple above all else because no one has been “taught by God”15 to such depth. She was “both mother and disciple,” as St. Augustine said of her, venturing to add that her discipleship was more important for her than her motherhood.16 There are good grounds for the statement made in the synod hall that Mary is “a living catechism” and “the mother and model of catechists.”

May the presence of the Holy Spirit, through the prayers of Mary, grant the Church unprecedented enthusiasm in the catechetical work that is essential for her. Thus will she effectively carry out, at this moment of grace, her inalienable and universal mission, the mission given her by her Teacher: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”17

With my apostolic blessing.

Given in Rome, at St. Peter’s, on October 16, 1979, the second year of my pontificate.