The Holy Spirit really is the ‘unknown God’. Many speak of him but few know who he is, how he acts, of what beauty and with what divine imagination he clothes himself. Even without showing himself directly, Chiara Lubich and her first companions realised that He was at work from the very first life beats of the Movement. A God, who kept well hidden, the embodiment of love teaching them what Love is. He the communicator, the love between the Father and the Son, he is the ‘gentle breeze’.

The Holy Spirit really is the ‘unknown God’. Many speak of him but few know who he is, how he acts, of what beauty and with what divine imagination he clothes himself. Even without showing himself directly, Chiara Lubich and her first companions realised that He was at work from the very first life beats of the Movement. A God, who kept well hidden, the embodiment of love teaching them what Love is. He the communicator, the love between the Father and the Son, he is the ‘gentle breeze’.

Chiara wrote: ‘Right from the start of our new life, we benefitted from his actions, day after day, sometimes gentle, sometimes strong and occasionally violent; and we never realised it was him. Throughout, from the first choice of God-Love, to the light that illuminated the words of the Gospel, the revelation of Jesus Forsaken, to joy, peace and light that we felt rise up in our hearts, living the new commandment, it was none other than the Holy Spirit at work. It could be said that the whole story of the Movement could be rewritten and be attributed to the Holy Spirit. Only now we can see that he was the real protagonist of our adventure, it was he who moved everything.

‘Now that he and what he has been for us has been is revealed to us we can retrace the luminous steps, countless signs of his constant and unpredictable actions. The inner voice which led us in our new way, the special atmosphere which gave joy to our meetings, the powerful release of hidden energy, that which purifies and renews, the divine alchemy which changes suffering into love, the experiences of death and resurrection: all these, and many other surprising phenomena  which accompanied us through life, have only one name, which we have learnt to recognise, to be infinitely grateful to and feel pushed to ask his intervention in all we do each day, from the simplest task to the most demanding. He has given us the courage to face the crowds, leave our country, suffer discomforts, opposition, often with joy. But the deepest effect, the most radical, the most typical is the bond of unity between us.

‘Our mysticism needs at least two people made God through participation, between whom the Holy Spirit really moves, that is the third, God, who consumes all into one, one God: “As I in you”, Jesus said to the Father. The Holy Spirit is the gift that Jesus gave us so that we could be like him and the Father. Without doubt the Holy Spirit was in us before, as we were Christians; but here there was a new enlightenment, a new manifestation within us, which made us sharers and actors in a new Pentecost, together with those other ecclesial movements who make the new face of the Church.’