Pope at Audience: The Holy Spirit makes us truly free

The freedom of the Holy Spirit But “to discover the full meaning of the realities of the Bible,” the Pope continued, it is necessary to go beyond the Old Testament “and come to Jesus,” who emphasizes the freedom of the Spirit: “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Like the wind, that cannot “be bridled, ‘bottled up,’ or put in a box, the Holy Spirit cannot be reduced to “concepts, definitions, theses, or treatises,” nor enclosed within “canons, institutions, or definitions.” The Spirit “creates and animates institutions, but cannot be ‘institutionalized’,” the Pope said. Freedom to serve At the same time, Pope Francis said, the freedom of the Spirit is not “a freedom to do what one wants, but the freedom to freely do what God wants!” This, he explained, “is a freedom that expresses itself in service, which appears to be the opposite, but is