Trust in God.

The spirit of the age is a particular atmosphere that causes carelessness and leads to a failure to distinguish good from evil. Today’s liturgical reading from the First Letter of John (1 John 3:22-4:6) exhorts the faithful to ‘abide in Bohu,’ that is, ‘believe in Jesus Christ and love one another.’ A person can live in the most sinful cities and the most atheistic societies, but if he remains in God, then such a man or woman brings salvation. Also, today, many Christians do not know who the Holy Spirit is and identify him as the dove. However, the Holy Spirit is the one who allows you to remain in the Lord, he is a guarantor and a power.

An apostle writes about a ‘spirit that does not confess that Jesus comes in the body,’ that is, ‘spirit antikrista,’ which ‘already has in the world.’ The spirit of the world is the opposite of the Holy Spirit. The worldly spirit is a particular atmosphere that causes carelessness and leads to being unable to distinguish good from evil. Therefore, to remain in God, we must ask for the gift of the Holy Spirit, a guarantee. But how do we know if we have the Holy Spirit or the spirit of the world? Apostle Paul gives us advice: ‘Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God’ (Ef 4:30). If we follow the spirit of the world, we grieve, ignore, and leave the Holy Spirit aside, and our lives go elsewhere.

The ear of the world provides for forgetfulness. It does not delay the sin that you record and ask for forgiveness from God, but the spirit of the world makes you forget what sin is as if something could be done. These days, a priest showed me a video recording on a mobile phone of how they welcomed the new year in a particular tourist town in a Christian country. They celebrated the new year worldly, with spending and festivities. That is the spirit of the world. Is it a sin? No, dear, that is corruption, which is worse than sin. The Holy Spirit leads you to God, and when you sin, He protects you and helps you to get up, but the spirit of the world leads you to corruption so that you cannot distinguish between good and evil. Everything is the same, identical.

The ear of the world leads to ignorance, which does not distinguish sin. An Argentine song sings, ‘Just keep going, no matter, we’ll meet down in the oven.’ So how should we behave to distinguish? The apostle John gives us advice: ‘Beloved, do not believe every spirit at once, but examine the spirits to see if they are from God… […] or from the world. But what does ‘explore ghosts’ mean? It’s simple: when you feel something, you want to do something, or you have a thought or a judgment about something, ask: it comes from what I feel, from God’s Spirit or from the spirit that is in the world. It is necessary to ask what is happening in ours once or twice a day. That is why St Paul and St John say: ‘Do not believe every spirit at once.’ Unfortunately, many Christians today have hearts like the streets and do not know who is coming and who is going because they cannot question what is happening in them.

Roto advises you to take some time every day before bed or at noon – when you want – and ask what has passed through your heart that day. What actions or thoughts have occurred to me? What spirit moved my heart? The Spirit of God, the gift of God, the Holy Spirit, who always leads me to meet the Lord, or the spirit of the world, which sweetly and slowly removes me from the Lord through a very gradual slide. So let us ask the Lord for this grace to remain in the Lord and ask the Holy Spirit to give us the grace to recognize the spirits, that is, what moves within us. May our heart not be like a road but the place of our encounter with God.