Novena to the Holy Spirit, Day 6
Holy Spirit, it is said of You that You are a kind and human loving spirit, and that a fruit that You make grow in the human soul is kindness!
Kindness is a pleasant attitude of man, which easily wins over the other person and makes him feel loved and acknowledged! And if this kindness is without falsehood – which it is without doubt, if it matures in the soul as a fruit of Your work – then it is a sun in the life of man! It reflects the attitude with which God meets us, because God does not only want us to recognize him as our Father, but he also wants to be our trusted friend!
Jesus calls his disciples his friends (cf. Jn 15,15), and that is how he treats them! His heart is turned towards them, he affirms them – but this does not prevent him from explaining to them also their wrong attitudes, in order to connect them more deeply with the love of God!
Kindness, dear Holy Spirit, does not consist in affirming everything that the other person does, but it is an attitude of the heart that is fundamentally turned towards the person, which enables him to know that he is accepted in our presence, that he does not need to protect himself, that he can let mistrust go and that he can meet us freely! It creates a basis of trust!
It is all the more clear that, O Holy Spirit, it must be a genuine friendliness, not an attitude that is pretentious or manipulative, and certainly not that attitude which is outwardly friendly, but then can speak evil behind our backs! That is far from it!
The kindness that is Your fruit therefore involves a transformation of the heart! One is then not only sometimes friendly and then again unfriendly and dependent on moods, but this kindness grows from the love connection with you!
If, through Your grace, it is to mature into a lasting basic mood of the heart, then clear out everything in my heart that may still stand against other people, so that it is not sympathies or antipathies that determine me, but the Yes, which You fundamentally say to people!
In this way, beloved God, everyone can get to know your friendliness to humanity, and if this is further enhanced by acts of love, then perhaps they will also notice that friendliness is not only a pleasant human attitude, but has an even deeper origin in you, especially if it is a constant way of meeting people!
And that, dear Holy Spirit, is so important for us Christians! We do not want to be in the foreground, but people should recognize You as the origin of all good things, Your kindness and goodness! But if we can open a path to this recognition through our kindness, then purify us even more and purify all that is untrue of us, all that is self-related, so that Your light can grow in us!