Daily Reflections

Alleluia, the Spirit of the LORD has filled the whole world; come, let us worship Him, alleluia!

BLESSED FEAST! May you and your families be filled with the Holy Ghost now and for all eternity.

Galatians 4:6; 3:26; 2 Timothy 1:7

Since you are all children of God through your Faith in Christ Jesus,
– God has sent into your hearts the Spirit of His Son, crying out: Abba, Father, alleluia.

The LORD has not given us a timid Spirit,
but a Spirit of strength, of love and of self-control.
– God has sent into your hearts the Spirit of His Son, crying out: Abba, Father, alleluia.

Pentecost Sunday or Whitsunday

By the outpouring of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost, Christ’s Paschal Mystery was brought to its completion. The Holy Ghost prepares us with His Grace to draw us to Christ. He manifests the Risen LORD to us, opening our minds. He makes present the Mystery of Christ. And He reconciles us, bringing us into communion with God. Saint Thomas Aquinas says that the Holy Ghost interiorly perfects our spirit, communicating to it a new dynamism so that it refrains from evil for love. With the Holy Ghost within us, “it is quite natural for people who had been absorbed by the things of this world to become entirely other worldly in outlook, and for cowards to become people of great courage” (Saint Cyril of Alexandria).

Our LORD Jesus Christ, being seated on the Right Hand of God, sent, as He had promised, the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles, Who, after His Ascension, continued in prayer at Jerusalem, in company with the Blessed Virgin, awaiting the fulfillment of His Promise.

Let us pray in like manner with the Church: “Come, O Holy Ghost, fill the hearts of Thy faithful and kindle in them the fire of Thy love.”

From the treatise Against Heresies by Saint Irenaeus, Bishop
(Lib. 3, 17. 1-3: SC 34, 302-306)

The sending of the Holy Ghost 

When the LORD told His disciples to go and teach all nations and baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, He conferred on them the power of giving men New Life in God.

He had promised through the prophets that in these last days He would pour out His Spirit on His servants and handmaids, and that they would prophesy. So when the Son of God became the Son of Man, the Spirit also descended upon Him, becoming accustomed in this way to dwelling with the human race, to living in men and to inhabiting God’s creation. The Spirit accomplished the Father’s Will in men who had grown old in sin, and gave them New Life in Christ. Luke says that the Spirit came down on the disciples at Pentecost, after the LORD’s Ascension, with power to open the gates of life to all nations and to make known to them the New Covenant. So it was that men of every language joined in singing one song of praise to God, and scattered tribes, restored to unity by the Spirit, were offered to the Father as the first-fruits of all the nations.

This was why the LORD had promised to send the Advocate: He was to prepare us as an offering to God. Like dry flour, which cannot become one lump of dough, one loaf of bread, without moisture, we who are many could not become One in Christ Jesus without the water that comes down from Heaven. And like parched ground, which yields no harvest unless it receives moisture, we who were once like a waterless tree could never have lived and borne fruit without this abundant rainfall from above. Through the Baptism that liberates us from change and decay we have become One in body; through the Spirit we have become One in soul.

The Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding, the Spirit of Counsel and Strength (Fortitude), the Spirit of Knowledge and the Fear of God came down upon the LORD, and the LORD in turn gave this Spirit to His Church, sending the Advocate from Heaven into all the world into which, according to His own words, the devil too had been cast down like lightning.

If we are not to be scorched and made unfruitful, we need the Dew of God. Since we have our accuser, we need an advocate as well. And so the LORD in His pity for man, who had fallen into the hands of brigands, having himself bound up his wounds and left for his care two coins bearing the royal image, entrusted him to the Holy Ghost. Now, through the Spirit, the image and inscription of the Father and the Son have been given to us, and it is our duty to use the coin committed to our charge and make it yield a rich profit for the LORD.

Putting Fear to Flight

On His way up to Jerusalem Jesus declared to His disciples: “I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already”! (Lk 12:49). These words were most visibly brought about fifty days after the Resurrection, at Pentecost. The real fire, the Holy Ghost, was brought to the earth by Christ. He did not steal it from the gods like Prometheus, according to the Greek myth, but rather made Himself the Mediator of the gift of God, obtaining it for us with the greatest Act of Love in history: His death on the Cross. In turn Jesus Christ constituted the Church as His Mystical Body so that She might extend His mission in history. Receive the Holy Ghost, the LORD said to the apostles on the evening of the Resurrection. Accompanying these words with an expressive gesture, He breathed on them. In this way He showed that He was communicating His Spirit to them.

Now in today’s Solemnity Scripture tells us once again how…to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. [The First Reading] recalls that the disciples had all met in one room. This room was the Upper Room where Jesus had eaten the Last Supper with His Apostles, where He had appeared to them Risen—that room that had become, so to speak, the headquarters of the nascent Church…. This also applies to the Church today, it applies to us. If we want to prevent Pentecost from being reduced to a mere rite or even an evocative commemoration, but want it to be an actual event of Salvation, we must prepare ourselves in devout expectation for the gift of God through humble and silent listening to His Word….

Lastly, a final thought may also be found in the account of the Acts of the Apostles: the Holy Ghost overcomes fear. We know that the disciples sought shelter in the Upper Room after the arrest of their LORD and that they had remained isolated for fear of suffering the same fate. After Jesus’ Resurrection their fear was not suddenly dispelled. But here at Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost rested upon them, those men emerged fearless and began to proclaim the Good News of the Crucified and Risen Christ to all. They were not afraid because they felt they were in the hands of the strongest One. Yes, wherever the Spirit of God enters He puts fear to flight; He makes us know and feel that we are in the hands of an Omnipotence of Love. His infinite Love does not abandon us. It is demonstrated by the witness of martyrs, the courage of confessors of the Faith, the undaunted zeal of missionaries, the frankness of preachers, and the example of all the saints, even some who were adolescents and children. It is demonstrated by the very existence of the Church, which despite the limitations and sins of men and women continues to cross the ocean of history, blown by the Breath of God 
and enlivened by His purifying Fire.

Pope Benedict XVI

His Holiness Benedict XVI († 2022) was Pope from 2005 to 2013. [From Holy Mass on the Solemnity of Pentecost, 23 May 2010, Saint Peter’s Basilica, Rome. Used with permission of the Libreria Editrice Vaticana. 

Acts 2:1-2

On the day of Pentecost
they had all gathered together in one place.
Out of the heavens suddenly there came
– the sound of a great wind,
which filled the whole house, alleluia.

The disciples had gathered together in one room.
Suddenly there came a sound from heaven.
– The sound of a great wind,
which filled the whole house, alleluia.