Today, at this Pentecost Vigil, who or what is the Holy Spirit? How can we recognize him? How do we go to him and how does he come to us? What does he do? The Church's great Pentecostal hymn with which we began Vespers: “Veni, Creator Spiritus... Come, Holy Spirit…”, gives us a first answer. Here the hymn refers to the first verses of the Bible that describe the creation of the universe with recourse to images. The Bible says first of all that the Spirit of God was moving over the chaos, over the waters of the abyss. The world in which we live is the work of the Creator Spirit.

Pentecost is not only the origin of the Church and thus in a special way her feast; Pentecost is also a feast of creation. The Creator Spirit has entered history and speaks to us in a new way. In Jesus Christ, God himself was made man and allowed us, so to speak, to cast a glance at the intimacy of God himself.

—"No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known" (Jn 1:18).