"The disciple of love" is one who - by the power of the Spirit - lives in his heart and in his flesh the encounter between the divine advent and the human exodus, accomplished in a normative and fontal manner in the Lord Jesus. The work of the Holy Spirit in history is totally at the service of realizing this encounter which He makes possible between the "already" and "not yet" of salvation anticipating in the present time of human beings the tomorrow of God’s promise. Threefold therefore is the work of the Holy Spirit in time: in the first place He is the living memory of God, who brings about the wonders of his advent "already" accomplished amongst us; then, He it is who transforms the "today" of human beings in the "today" of grace which saves; lastly, He it is who unceasingly conjugates the present of the world with the "not yet" of the last day. Thanks to this threefold work of the Counsellor, the water of life flows with ever new freshness in the days of humanity: and it is in this sense that we can say that mission is par excellence the work of the Spirit and that He is the principal agent in the Church’s missionary activity...

I. The Spirit and the memory of God
The Spirit is the living memory of God, He it is who gives this memory to the Church. He it is who leads believers to the whole truth of the Father revealed once and for all in his Son Jesus: "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you to all the truth" (Jn 16,13). Truth - according to the biblical understanding - is not the Greek ale theia, taking away the veil to exhibit to sight that which previously was hidden, it is the Jewish etnet, fidelity to the pact, living the covenant with God As the Spirit of truth, the Paraclete is the One who realises the fidelity of God, making His gift present in every time and every place. In history the Spirit realises in this way the memorial of the covenant, causing to sound in time the words of life with which are said the Word and the Silence of God: Scripture, then is the place par excellence for the action of the Spirit since in Scripture the Word of God comes to live in the words of men thanks to the work of the Counsellor.
a) In the Spirit the Word is power coming from on high, "living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Heb 4,12). The Word of God produces that which it announces: "As the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return without watering the earth, making it yield and giving growth to provide seed for the sower and bread for the eating, so the word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do" (Is 55, 10). Therefore Scripture inspired by God -custodian of the Word - "is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work" (2 Tim 3, 16). So the Word, consigned in Scripture, must be given hearing, "trust and obedience, in life as in death" (Karl Barth): in it speaks the living and holy God. In it the Spirit brings about the dialogue of the Bridegroom with the Bride, the Church. Scripture is the source of a believing existence: from it faith draws its object, finds in it its criteria, receives its strength, thanks to it is always young and able to speak to the different generations of men and women, who need to hear the Word of the Most High, which alone is Word of eternal life (cf Jn 6,69). The exegete, who fully builds the bridge between the Word and life, allowing the interpretation of the letter so it may disclose its hidden treasure, is the Spirit: "But the Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you" (Jn 14, 26). If the Word incarnate is the exegete of the Father (cf Jn 1,18), the Spirit is the exegete of the Son, the Spirit of truth, who will glorify Jesus manifesting the riches of His mystery: "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you." The Spirit is the force of attraction, the ecstatic love of God, through which He exits from silence and communicates Himself in the Word, provoking love in response, equally ecstatic, which must break out of the closure of its own world and immerse itself in the endless paths of Silence, to which the event of revelation faithfully leads. "To God who reveals, must be given the obedience of faith" (cf Rom 16,26; Rom 1,5 2 Cor 10 5-6), but "if this faith is to be shown, the grace of God and the interior help of the Holy Spirit must precede and assist, moving the heart and turning it to God, opening the eyes of the mind and giving joy and ease to everyone in assenting to the truth and believing it" (Dei Verbutn 5). The Spirit works therefore in history through the Word of the living God, towards whom He turns hearts and from whom He causes to flow rivers of living water. Born of the Word, "Creatura Verbi", the Church is continuously regenerated through listening to the Word and realises that she is sent to proclaim to all peoples this fontal gift, pervaded by the Spirit: the gift of the Word of God. Mission is entirely a "creature" of the Word of God in the power of Spirit...
b) Besides Scripture, however, also the living Tradition of the faith thought and lived in ecclesial communion offers itself as a place peculiar to the work of the Holy Spirit: also to the witnesses of Tradition the believer will listen in order to encounter and welcome that which the Eternal continues to say to the Church living in time. Far from being mechanical repetition of something which is dead, Tradition is life which transmits life. The divine advent gives rise to a pilgrim people which hands on - from witness to witness - to every generation, the memory of the Eternal, linked to the text of inspired Scripture, but also to the context of the proclamation and the believing practice, in which the Spirit works to lead the Church towards the fulness of divine truth. In living Tradition, the memory of the faith becomes presence and actual experience, through which the advent accomplished once and for all in Jesus Christ becomes contemporary to the today of men through the power of the Holy Spirit. In this sense we could say that Tradition is the history of the Spirit in the history of His Church: "And thus God who spoke of old, uninterruptedly converses with the Bride of His beloved Son; the Holy Spirit, through whom the living voice of the gospel resounds in the Church, and through her in the world, leads unto the truth all those who believe and makes the word of Christ dwell abundantly in them (cf Col 3,16)" (Dei Verbum 8). Mission lives of this deep rooting in the "traditio fidei": a missionary does not announce himself, or his personal faith, but the faith to which he has been generated in the Church, transmitted in the power of the Spirit in living ecclesial tradition.
Tradition expresses itself most particularly in the liturgy; where the mystery proclaimed, celebrated and lived offers itself with exceptional value of totality: "In the liturgy the Spirit who inspired the Scriptures continues to speak; the liturgy is the Tradition itself in its highest grade of power and solemnity" (D. Gueranger). With its texts the liturgy moulds the language of the faith and it in turn its expression ("lex orandi, lex credendi"), in the liturgy the Spirit comes again and again in history to render present and effective the covenant with God ("epiclesi"). The liturgy is, in this sense, an extraordinary missionary act, indeed it is the summit and source of the Church’s entire missionary activity. In the communion expressed and nourished by the liturgy, the Church nourishes herself with the voices of the faith of all times and makes them resound in her proclamation to the world: the voice of the Fathers, from whom she learns to love Scripture, the unitary horizon on which life must be lived in the light of the Word of God, the joy of the symbol, which respects the Mystery in the act itself of being aware of its proximity; the voice of the theologians and the spiritual men and women of different times and places, whose message can nourish the reflected experience of the Mystery, making it more attentive and open to the surprises of the advent. If missionary activity were to live a break with the past, not only would it be impoverished at the level of memory, also it would be in danger of separating itself from the great principle of unity, which is the Spirit operating in history and particularly recognisable in the continuity of the living tradition of the faith thought and lived. Moreover, not only the faith registered in the texts nourishes faithful memory of the Eternal, but also the living faith, the act of believing and abandoning oneself to God which countless hosts of witnesses has lived and lives drawn by the Counsellor and as his gift. At the school of this faith, even simple and unvoiced, the missionary proclamation commemorates in the Spirit the wonders of the Lord to open minds and hearts to the newness of God’s promises. So too, the effective memory of God in his Spirit makes itself known...
c) We understand in this way that the place of Spirit’s action which comprises and clarifies all the others, the sacrament in time of the unique and definitive Sacrament of God, who is the incarnate Word, is the Church: "And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? And how can men preach unless they are sent?" (Rom 10,14). From witness to witness, from faith to faith, the Word which resounded at the fulness of time reaches, through the power of the Spirit, the little ones of history’s "today": the Church is the sacramental visibility of the Spirit’s action in history, charged with all the light that He gives her, as well as the shadows and burdens which characterise the life of her children. In this sense the Church is the place of the Spirit in as much as she is inseparably "kenosi" and splendour of the Trinity. From Church communion every individual believer receives the life of faith: to the communion each one gives, under the action of the Spirit, his own contribution of thought and life. If it is to the little ones that the mysteries of the Kingdom are revealed (cf Mt 11,25) from the humble and poor people of believers it is possible to learn the things of God: "We must believe that an ignorant people can teach us things of God" (Carlos Mesters). The believing existence and the proclamation of the faith to the world are nourished, that is, by the "sense of faith" which the Holy Spirit effuses into the hearts of all the baptised, and from their language, from the way they tell of the marvels of the Lord, they learn to speak of God in ever new ways: before being word, faith is listening and silence, in front of the lives of the saints, where less unfaithfully love, narrated in the Pascal event, renders itself present in the time of men thanks to the work of the Counsellor. At the school of lived charity, faith comes to know its object and allows itself to be captured and pervaded to become proclamation. The "communio sanctorum" nourishes the thought and the life of the missionary of the Gospel, as the place in which the Spirit makes present the memory of God...

2. The Spirit and the "today" of God
The disciple’s faith cannot fail to conjugate the conscious assumption of the present time with the memory of God, living and powerful in the Spirit. In the Spirit the "today" of men is visited and transformed to become the "today" of God, the hour of His grace: therefore, "it is the task of the entire People of God, especially the Bishops and theologians to hear, distinguish and interpret the many voices of our age, and to judge them in the light of the divine Word. In this way, revealed truth can always be more deeply penetrated, better understood, and set forth to greater advantage". (Gaudium et spes 44). The events of history, since they are lived by the Spirit who speaks to His people, offer themselves as "signs of the times" to which must correspond the commitment of faith, which interprets and acts: "We must recognise and understand the world in which we live, its expectation, its longings and its often dramatic characteristics." (ib.,4; cf Mt 16,2s; Lk 12, 54-56).
a) The recognition of the signs of the Spirit in the present time, demands from the Church’s missionary activity authentic work of discernment to embrace inseparably three moments: the assumption of the complexity; confrontation with the Word; indication of temporary and credible paths. To assume the complexity means to recognise the reality of the world in the whole play of historical relations which characterise it. Complexity is assumed by one who does reads history not from a pre-constituted ideological schema, one who strives to let himself be perturbed and provoked in his prejudices, who accepts the weight of not having diagnosis ready made or pre-determined therapies. Faith must then educate itself to assume complexity, to respect it in its irreducibility, to remain in it with humility and sharing, bear it with charity. Only at this price does mission avoid becoming ideology, easy, prefabricated reading of the world, ideal conciliation which ignores the truth and the perennial incompleteness of reality. Far from closing herself in a tranquil castle of easy certainties, the missionary Church listening to the Spirit - committed to discerning the signs of the times - must live on the brink of history, in dialogue with and in the demanding and fruitful company of all those who make the real vicissitude in which she is placed: precisely in this way she will open to recognise and welcome with docility the action of the Spirit who in the "today" of man renders present the "today" of God.
b) This assumption of complexity brings with it the inevitable danger of having to deal with the ambiguity of history, lights mingle with shadows, generosity with selfishness, innocent suffering with individual and structural causes of the world’s passion, hopes with deceptions and delusions. The possibility of letting oneself be confounded is a constant threat: how often even missionary work has succumbed to the seduction of the spirit of time and the logic of the power of the moment! This is why the proclamation of the faith needs a criteria of orientation: and this can only be found in the Word of God transmitted by the Church, there where the living God offered himself to history to judge it and save it and through the Spirit speaks to his people. Comparison with Word in the ecclesial communion is an indispensable moment of discernment: we must "hold the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other" (Karl Barth). An expert in complexity, the believer committed to proclamation will not seek in the Word ready-made solutions or easy answers: he will accept to listen to it faithfully and obey it patiently following itineraries of comprehension not always short or clear. To the Word he will bring real history, the open questions, the glimpses of light, the interrupted paths: from the Word he will ask light to orient the way and sustain the struggle, to take a stance and judge there where it is necessary and possible, to wait with patience where things are not yet clear. It is in this way that the advent walks with the exodus in the ever new miracle of the action of the Counsellor: it is in this way that we listen to what the Spirit says to the Churches "today" ...
c) In the encounter between history and the Word missionary discernment of faith opens to temporary and credible proposals, it does not lead to total and definitive solutions, because everything it allows to be proposed is marked by the infinite contingence of life’s complexity; and nevertheless, it tends to give credible indications, which can be trusted, precisely because they are rooted in fidelity to man and in demanding and normative fidelity to the Word of God. Reading history through the Gospel, the discernment of faith reads by analogy the Gospel through history: it dares to propose the point of view of the Advent, confident in the fidelity of the Divine, who in the Spirit speaks to present-day history. This makes it possible for missionary activity to recognise the "signs of the times" where the Spirit of truth is at work, actualising God’s fidelity at all times and all places. Concrete and general examples of these signs are aspirations for justice, freedom and peace, the presence of faithful witnesses to the Gospel and the radicalness of love, even to sacrificing life in solidarity with the weakest and at the service of justice for all. It is then above all in the exercise of charity that the Christian community takes up the challenge of the signs of the times, shows solidarity with the concrete man and serves him through the proclamation of the Gospel in the cause for his fullest development and hence for his liberation from all that offends his dignity as a child of God.
On this path there opens before the eyes of faith the mysterious presence of the Lord in the greatest variety of human situations: Christ hides himself in the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, in the excluded and the suffering, in exploited children, in oppressed women, in the poorest of the poor (cf Mt 25,3 Iss). He who responds to the hunger and thirst of all these with a love which is free and which frees, becomes a living gospel, the Word written by the Spirit no longer traced on tablets of stone, but on the hearts of men (cf 2 Cor 3,3): "Christ has no hands except ours to do his work today; Christ has no feet except ours to go towards men and women of today; Christ has no lips except ours to announce his gospel today. We are the only Bible which all people still read. We are the last call of God, written in words and deeds" (from a 14th century prayer). Christ’s presence in the today of pain and tears can be recognised wherever there is someone who loves in his name: "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (Jn 13, 35). Love of neighbour reveals love of God (cf Mk 12,28-31): "For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen."(l Jn 4,20). In this concrete love, Christ makes himself present in His Spirit and speaks His words of eternal life. Our neighbour, in need of love or a witness of living love is, in the Spirit, a true sacrament of encounter with Him: a place of the Spirit, an appointment of salvation (cf Gen 1,26; Mt 25,3 Iss; Rom 8,29; Col 3,10). Mission speaks with the eloquence of charity which the Spirit pours into our hearts (cf Rom 5,5).

3. The Spirit and the future of God 
The work of the Spirit in history not only renders present the mystery of the advent achieved in the Lord Jesus, transforming the "today" of men into the "today" of salvation, it also "draws" into the present of the world, the future of God’s promise, of which it is a pledge. God’s people God live, that is, of the tension between the first and the second coming of the Lord, rich in the gift already received and longing for the completion of what must yet be achieved in the new creation. The time of the Church is not yet the ultimate time, it is the ’penultimate’ time, in which salvation already begun, must be carried to its fulness: generated by Christ in the Spirit through the same Christ in the one Spirit of life the "Ecclesia viatorum", the pilgrim Church, moves towards the Father and, as she draws the world towards the divine heart, she brings the presence of the Trinitarian love among men.
a) This being oriented towards the final and definitive homeland thanks to the unceasing action of the Spirit gives the Church first of all awareness of her relativity: she acknowledges that she is not an absolute, she is a tool, not an end, but a means, a poor servant in her pilgrim condition. No acquisition, no success must temper the ardour of her waiting: all presumption of having arrived, all "ecstasy of fulfillment" is temptation and hindrance. The Church of the Spirit is not already the Kingdom in glory, but only the Kingdom initiated, "praesens in mysterio" (ib., 3): she bears within herself the fleeting figure of this world and lives the yearning and travail of the birth of the new heavens and the new earth. All earthly identification of the Kingdom is rejected: the Church - docile to the Spirit - is "in via et non in patria" and therefore "semper reformanda", called to constant renewal and ongoing purification, unsatisfied and insatiable by any human conquest. In the wonder of praise, in the fatigue of service, in the proclamation of the Word, in the celebration of the sacraments, in the contemplation of the faith, the Church knows she must let herself be ever more possessed by her Spouse, to "constantly move forward towards the fullness of divine truth, until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her" (Dei Verbum, 8) . Nothing is more foreign to the style of a missionary Church, docile to the Spirit working in history, than an attitude of triumphalism, of yielding to the seduction of present power and possession in this world. The people of God, born at the foot of the Cross and a pilgrim through the long Good Friday, which is history of mankind on earth, must never mistake the pale lights of some earthly glory for the light of the Glory promised in the paschal victory. The Church’s ultimate goal is not to gain success according to the greatness of this world, but to sing the "Nunc dimittis" like old Simeon, when the light of the gentiles at last unveiled, will rise for all. Precisely in this way she puts on that light which draws the universal pilgrimage of peoples towards her Lord.
b) Her eschatological nature leads the Church also to relativise the greatness of this -world. everything is subject to the judgement of the promise of the Lord, ever living and present in the power of the Spirit. The presence of Christians in history is an exile and a struggle: <"while we are at home in the body we are separated from the Lord" (2 Cor 5,6) and having the first fruits of the Spirit we cry in our hearts (cf Rom 8,23) and we long to be with Christ (cf. Phil 1,23). By this same charity we are led to live more intensely for Him, who for us died and is Risen (cf. 2 Cor 5,15). This is why we seek to be pleasing to the Lord in all things (cf. 2 Cor 5,9) and we put on the armour of God so we may be strong against the snares of the devil and resist on the bad day (cf Eph 6 11-13)> (Lumen Gentium, 48). In the name of the Spirit, who animates her, the missionary Church will be on guard against all the short-sighted realisations of the hopes of this world: present to every human situation, in solidarity with the poor and the oppressed, it will not be right for her to identify her hope with any one of the hopes of history. This critical vigilance does not mean however lack of commitment: it is, on the contrary, costly and demanding. It is a question of assuming human hopes and verifying them, confronting them with the Lord’s Resurrection, which on the one hand supports all authentic commitment for liberation and human development on the other contests all absolutising of earthly goals. In this twofold sense, ecclesial hope, the hope of the resurrection, is resurrection of hope: it gives life to all that is prisoner of death and inexorably judges all that claims to make itself an idol of hearts and of life. In the name of its "eschatological reserve" the Church’s mission cannot identify itself with any ideology, power of party or system, but for all it must be a critical conscience, a reminder of the first origin and ultimate destination, a stimulus for the promotion of the whole person, in every person. The people of God, a reminder of the homeland, is disturbing and disquieting, free for the faith and a servant out of love, by no means an instrument of the system or protagonist of a compromise in spiritualist disengagement. The goal, which makes Christians strangers and pilgrims in this world, is not a dream which alienates reality, but a stimulating force of commitment for justice, peace and the protection of creation in the world today.
c) Lastly, the call of the homeland, already savoured in the promise, fills the missionary Church with hope and joy: her eschatological nature is militant anticipation in the power of the Spirit of the victory over pain, evil and death. Despite the trials and contradictions of the present, the people of God rejoices already in hope which the divine promise has kindled in its faith: sustained by this hope, certain guarantee that the final word of history will not be pain, sin and death but joy, grace and life, the Church is a pilgrim towards the goal, already rejoicing for it. In her is realised the word of the Psalm: "How I rejoiced when they said: We will go to the house of the Lord!" (Ps 122,1). This joy is born not of the presumption of building a ladder to heaven, a sort of new tower of Babel of a world prisoner of itself: the peace and the strength of the Church are rooted in her eschatological vocation, in the certainty that the Spirit of Lord is already working in her to build in the time of men the future promised by God. God "has time" for mankind and builds his house with them: Jerusalem, longed for and awaited, is already coming down from heaven (cf Rev. 21,2). To believers remains the duty of living the mystery of the Advent in the heart of human history: "The Spirit and the Bride say: Come!" to them the Living Lord replies: "I shall indeed be with you soon". (Rev. 22 17.20). Of this desire, of this joyful waiting the ecclesial mission is the voice in history in every time and place ...
Conclusion: the song of the witness
"Let us sing the chant of praise for the death of the Church, a death which leads us back to the source of the holy life in Christ" (Cyril of Alexandria Glaphyrorum in Genesim 6. PG 69,329) A loving cantor of the Church intones the death chant of the Church: this he does not because of his weak convictions, or fear of danger, but because of that higher intelligence of love, opened only by the eyes of faith. He understands that the Mother has no other ambition but to generate sons and daughters for God, to die so as to give life to them is the supreme destiny of the Beloved one. He knows that the Church, sacrament of eternity in time, will be replaced by the full light of glory when Christ comes at last in his final advent. Divine "kenosi" will surrender its place to the splendour of the last day: the Trinity, of which the Church is the "icon", will shine throughout the whole of the universe and in every heart. Like Jacob’s loved one, giving birth to the "son of pain" who has become the beloved one of Israel, so too the Church will disappear while generating humanity to the splendour of the eternal day.
Until that time, the Church will be the privileged place for Spirit’s action in history, and therefore the Mother of whom the children of God have need in order to live, the chosen one who never ages, because she is rejuvenated by the love of those to whom she gives life again and again: "Never separate yourself from the Church! No power has her force. Your hope is the Church. Your salvation is the Church. Your refuge is the Church. She is higher than the sky and greater than earth. She never ages: her youth is eternal" (St John Chrysostom, Homilia De capto Eutripio, c. 6: PG52,402). Loving her we possess the Spirit, we encounter Christ and we live of Him: "The more we have the Holy Spirit the more we love the Church of Christ". (St Augustine, In Johan. Evang. Tract., 32,8; CChr 36,304). Because the Church on mission, is Mary who continues to proclaim to the world that Christ is risen and the great duel has been won by life, life which will have no end. And even though she has only an empty tomb and abandoned burial cloths to show, in this poverty of hers lies her wealth, in this weakness her strength. She has seen Glory hide himself and reveal himself under the fragile signs of history: in her this mystery of revelation and hiding continues to be present. Of this mystery, reached by faith in the Risen One and by consolation of the Spirit, speaks the song of the witness, the joyful proclamation of one who has known victory, who has conquered and will conquer death: "Victimae paschali laudes / immolent christiani. / Agnus redemit oves: / Christus innocens Patri / reconciliavit peccatores. / Mors et vite duello / conflixere mirando: / dux vitae mortuus, / regnat vivus. / Die nobis, Maria, / quid vidisti in via? / Sepulcrum Christi viventis, / et gloriam vidi resurgentis: / angelicos testes, / sudarium et vestes. / Surrexit Christus spes mea: / praecedet suos in Galilaeam. / Scimus Christum surrexisse / a mortuis vere: / tu nobis, victor rex, miserere".1 When this song has ended, the Church of the Holy Spirit will have completed her mission in time. Glory will have begun. God will be all in all and the world, entirely reconciled, will be the homeland of the Trinity...

1 Easter Sequence: Vipo of Borgogne 11th century: "Christians, to the Paschal Victim offer sacrifice and praise. Th sheep are ransomed by Hie Lamb and Christ, the undefiled. hath sinners to his Father reconciled. Death with life contended: combat strangely ended! Life’s own Champion slain, yet live to reign. Tell us Mary: say what thou didst see upon the way. The tomb the living life enclose; I saw Christ’s glory as he rose! The angles there attesting; shroud with grave-clothes resting, Christ my hope has risen: he goes before you into Galilee. That Christ is truly risen from the dead we know. Victorious king, thy mercy show!"