Today the entire Church celebrates with unspeakable joy the Solemnity of Pentecost, the arrival of the Holy Spirit on the Virgin Mary and the Apostles, the original Church, fifty days after the Resurrection of Christ.
The presence of the Holy Spirit among men means the fulfillment of the promise made by the Lord at the end of his earthly life: God would send his Spirit, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, to intercede and lead the Church to the end of the times.
Receive the main news from ACI Prensa by WhatsApp and Telegram
It is increasingly difficult to see Catholic news on social media. Subscribe to our free channels today:
The Church gathered waiting for the Spirit
‘Pentecost’ is a word from the Greek: πεντηκοστή, pentecostḗ, whose meaning is ‘fiftieth’. That is, it is an allusion to the festival that is celebrated on the fiftieth day of the Easter Season.
In the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles We can find the story of what happened fifty days (fiftieth) after the Resurrection of the Lord: “Suddenly a noise came from heaven like a gust of impetuous wind, which filled the entire house in which they were. Tongues like fire appeared to them, spread out and rested on each one of them; They were all filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2, 1-11).
The Catholic Church expresses the joy of this historic event by singing the Glory of the Holy Spirit in the so-called ‘Sequence’, Come Holy Spirit (Come Holy Spirit):
Come, God Holy Spirit,
and send us from heaven
your light, to illuminate us.
Come now, father of the poor,
light that penetrates the souls,
giver of all gifts.
Source of all comfort,
kind guest of the soul,
peace in hours of mourning.
You are a break from work;
breeze, in a climate of fire;
comfort, in the midst of crying.
Come, sanctifying light,
and enters the depths of the soul
of all those who adore you.
Without your inspiration
divine men nothing
We can and sin dominates us.
Wash away our filth,
fertilize our deserts
and heal our wounds.
Bend our pride,
warms our coldness,
straighten our paths.
Grant to those who put
in you his faith and his trust
your seven sacred gifts.
Give us virtues and merits,
give us a good death
and with you eternal joy.
A new Pentecost
Saint John Paul II, reflecting on this event in his encyclical “Lord and Giver of Life“, About the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church and the world, recalled the importance of Pentecost for the life of the Church throughout history. The Pope recalled that “the Second Vatican Council speaks of the birth of the Church on the day of Pentecost. “Such an event constitutes the definitive manifestation of what had taken place in the Cenacle itself on Easter Sunday.”
“The risen Christ – the Pope continues – came and ‘brought’ the Holy Spirit to the apostles. He gave it to them saying, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’ What had happened then inside the Cenacle, ‘with the doors closed’, later, on the day of Pentecost, is also manifested outside, before men.”
The Holy Pontiff, citing the dogmatic constitution of the Second Vatican Council “The light” (Christ, Light of the people) highlighted that “the Spirit dwells in the Church and in the hearts of the faithful as in a temple (cf. 1 Cor 3:16; 6:19), and in them he prays and bears witness to their adoption as sons (cf. Ga 4,6; Rom 8,15-16 and 26). It guides the Church to all truth (cf. Jn 16:13), unifies it in communion and ministry, provides and governs it with various hierarchical and charismatic gifts and embellishes it with its fruits (cf. Eph 4:11-12; 1 Co 12,4; Ga5,22).
Let us go out to announce the Gospel to the world, trusting in the Holy Spirit!
Gospel of the Mass of the day
Jn 20, 19-23
On the evening of the day of the resurrection, when the doors of the house where the disciples were were closed, for fear of the Jews, Jesus stood among them and said to them: “Peace be with you.” Having said this, he showed them his hands and his side.
When the disciples saw the Lord, they were filled with joy. Again Jesus said to them: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
After saying this, he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Those whose sins are forgiven will be forgiven; and those whose sins are not forgiven will remain unforgiven.”
O well: Jn 15, 26-27; 16, 12-15
At that time, Jesus said to his disciples: “When the Comforter comes, which I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness of me, and you will also bear witness, for from They have been with me from the beginning.
I still have many things to tell you, but you still cannot understand them. But when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into the full truth, because he will not speak on his own account, but he will say what he has heard and will announce to you the things that are going to happen. He will glorify me, because he will first receive from me what I communicate to them. Everything the Father has is mine. That is why I have said that he will take what is mine and tell it to you.”
…
If you want to know more about what is celebrated on the day of Pentecost, we recommend this article from the Catholic Encyclopedia: https://ec.aciprensa.com/wiki/Pentecost%C3%A9s.
More information:
Central Editorial
The Catholic Information Agency – ACI Prensa, is part of the news agencies of the ACI Group, one of the largest generators of Catholic news content in five languages and which has belonged since June 2014 to the EWTN Global Catholic Network family, the largest Catholic television network in the world, founded in 1981 by Mother Angelica in Irondale, Alabama (United States), and which reaches more than 85 million homes in 110 countries and 16 territories.