Dear friends in Christ

Today, as members of the Church born on this day, we can indeed wish each other a happy Birthday!

Pentecost is the moment that changes everything. It was one of the great Jewish festivals, when many Israelites would go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem to adore God in His Temple. This was the fifty days after the Passover. The material harvest which the Jews celebrated with such joy, became a new celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit with all His gifts and fruits. It is with the appearance of fire that God manifests the outpouring of His life upon the first members of the Church gathered in that upper room. Fire both penetrates and purifies: both actions which the Holy Spirit brings about in our souls: Lord, with the fire of the Holy Spirit, purify our inmost being and heart.

Pentecost is not an isolated historical event. The Holy Spirit continues daily to sanctify the Church. As Saints Francis de Sales says: The Paraclete sanctifies every soul. This He does through the innumerable inspirations which are all the attractions, motions, rebukes and interior compunctions, lights and intuitions which God works in us. So He strengthens our hearts with his blessings, with His Fatherly love, so as to arouse us, move us, impel us and draw us to holy virtues, to heavenly love, to good resolutions: in short, to all that leads to our eternal life. (Introduction to the Devout Life, III,18.)

Thanks be to God for our belonging to that Body of Christ, instituted by Jesus Christ and vivified on this Day of Pentecost. All of us who are Baptised and Confirmed—especially those Confirmed by the Bishop here last Sunday—enjoy this life which, even here on earth is a foretaste of the life to come. We ask Mary, whose feast as Mother of the Church we celebrate on Monday, to protect us, and bring us to deeper friendship with God, the Holy Spirit!

Msgr Kevin Hale