On Pentecost St. John Cantius Church follows an ancient tradition of dropping red rose petals from above on to the congregation. The roses symbolize the tongues of fire that descended on Jesus’ disciples on Pentecost.
I’ve never seen that done before. It’s a shame I can only watch it on YouTube tomorrow.
circa 1525
Bernard van Orley, workshop of Netherlandish, c. 1488–1541
Christians celebrated Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came down upon Christ’s followers.
In Acts 2 we’re told:
When the day of Pentecost had arrived, they were all together in one place.2 Suddenly a sound like that of a violent rushing wind came from heaven, and it filled the whole house where they were staying. 3 And tongues, like flames of fire that were divided, appeared to them and rested on each one of them. 4 Then they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different languages, as the Spirit gave them ability for speech.
5 There were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven. 6 When this sound occurred, a crowd came together and was confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language. 7 And they were astounded and amazed, saying,<sup class="footnote" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; vertical-align: top; top: 0px;" data-fn="#fen-HCSB-26957a" data-link="[a]”>[a] “Look, aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 How is it that each of us can hear in our own native language? 9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites; those who live in Mesopotamia, in Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11 Cretans and Arabs—we hear them speaking the magnificent acts of God in our own languages.” 12 They were all astounded and perplexed, saying to one another, “What could this be?” 13 But some sneered and said, “They’re full of new wine!”
It’s one of my favorite holidays because it’s when the people were given the 7 Gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, fear of the Lord
Are you still celebrating Easter? In these final weeks of the Easter Season I invite you to prepare for Pentecost which is May 19th. From May 10-18th participate in a Pentecost Novena. Each day pray for the graces you need from the Holy Spirit at this time in your life.
For the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit
Blessed Spirit of Wisdom, help me to seek God. Make Him the center of my life and order my life to Him, so that love and harmony may reign in my soul.
Blessed Spirit of Understanding, enlighten my mind, that I may know and love the truths of faith and make them truly my own.
Blessed Spirit of Counsel, enlighten and guide me in all my ways, that I may always know and do Your holy Will. Make me prudent and courageous.
Blessed Spirit of Fortitude, uphold my soul in every time of trouble or adversity. Make me loyal and confident.
Blessed Spirit of Knowledge, help me to know good from evil. Teach me to do what is right in the sight of God. Give me clear vision and firmness in decision.
Blessed Spirit of Piety, possess my heart, incline it to a true faith in You, to a holy love of You, my God, that with my whole soul I may seek You, Who are my Father, and find You, my best, my truest joy.
Blessed Spirit of Holy Fear, penetrate my inmost heart that I may ever be mindful of Your presence. Make me fly from sin, and give me intense reverence for God and for my fellow men who are made in God’s image.
Blessed Holy Spirit, at this time I particularly ask for this spiritual gift ……………… (name the gift you need right now) and for your guidance as I deal with ………………….. (name something you are dealing with right now)
Prayer
Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, enkindle in them the fire of your Love.
Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created, and You shall renew the face of the earth. Let us pray. O God, You have taught the hearts of Your faithful people by sending them the light of Your Holy Spirit. Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things and evermore to rejoice in His holy comfort. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Since I live in China, the internet ministry is really my church. I woke up and decided to listen to Moody Church Hour. (I’ll go to the cathedral for Pentecost mass this evening, but that will be in Chinese.)
I listened to a recording entitled “When We are Forgiven” and it opened with this powerful song, Jesus, Friend of a Wounded Heart. Boy, I wish we sang this at my church back in Illinois.
Friend of a Wounded Heart
Smile, make them think you’re happy
Lie and say that things are fine
And hide that empty longing that you feel
Don’t ever show it, just keep your heart concealed
Why are the days so lonely?
I wonder where, where can a heart go free?
And who will dry the tears that no one sees?
There must be someone to share your silent dreams
Caught like a leaf in the wind
Looking for a friend, where can you turn?
Whisper the words of a prayer
And you’ll find Him there, arms open wide, love in His eyes
Jesus, He meets you where you are
Jesus, He heals your secret scars
All the love you’re longing for is Jesus
The friend of a wounded heart
Joy comes like the morning
Hope deepens as you grow
And peace beyond the reaches of your soul
Comes blowing through you for love has made you whole
Once like a leaf in the wind
Looking for a friend, where could you turn?
You spoke the words of a prayer
And you found Him there, arms open wide, love in His eyes
Jesus, He meets you where you are
Jesus, He heals your secret scars
All the love you’re longing for is Jesus
The friend of a wounded heart
Jesus, He meets you where you are
Jesus, He heals your secret scars
And all the love you’re longing for is Jesus
All the love that you need, oh it’s Jesus
The friend of a wounded heart
Friend of a wounded heart, friend of a wounded heart
Friend of a wounded heart, friend of a wounded heart
A continuation of yesterday’s post of Karl Rahner‘s homily:
We in the church would be able to discover and experience the Spirit of the Lord more easily and more powerfully if we were not afraid of Him. He is in fact the Spirit of life, of freedom, of confidence of hope and joy, of unity, and thus of peace. We might therefor suppose that the human person longs for the Holy Spirit more than anything else. But he is the Spirit who constantly breaks through all frontiers in order to make these gifts, who seeks to deliver up everything to the incomprehensibility which we call God; he is the Spirit who gives life through death.
It is not surprising that we are afraid of Him. For we always want to know what we are involved in, we want to have the entries in our life’s account clearly before us and to be able to add them up to a figure that we can clearly grasp. We are frightened of experiments whose outcome cannot be foreseen. We hate to be overtaxed and like to measure our duty by what we are prepared to accomplish without great efforts. We want the Spirit therefore in small doses, but He won’t put up with this. We trust him only insofar as he is expressed in literary form, in law and tradition, in institutions that have proved their worth. We want him to be measured by these standards, to prove His identity as Holy Spirit through these, although in fact it should be the other way around.
We are afraid of the Spirit. In a word, he is too incalculable for us. We believe only in theory and not in practical life that God is infinite incomprehensibility into which the Holy Spirit wants to hurl us. We make our permanent home in what should be merely a starting point or take-off runway for this movement of human beings through faith, hope and love, into the immense incomprehensibility of God.
It is no better when we give the name of church to this country which we don’t want to leave, when we forget that the church too has validity before God and human beings only to the extent that she produces through word and sacrament this hope and faith and the love in which human persons entrust themselves unconditionally to the Holy Spirit of God.
Even in the life of the church as such this fear of the Holy Spirit can be found. Fear can be perceived among the “traditionalists.” They fear risks and experiments the results of which are not known in advance. They don’t want to hear any formulation of faith with which they have not been familiar with since childhood onward, as if a proposition and the Spirit which it attests were simply identical. They want to have unity in the variety of the church in such a way that they can thoroughly understand this unity and take it under their own control. The tradition which they defend–as such rightly–is for them the land of the fathers, now definitely acquired and only needing to be inhabited and governed, not a station on a pilgrimage, beckoning them on further, even though the course in the direction in which they had hitherto been moving. And if they admit and profess in theory the doctrine of divine unrest, known as the Holy Spirit, it is only in order really to have the right to refuse the demands of this incalculable Spirit in practical life.
On the other hand, we get the impression that those also are often afraid of the Holy Spirit who proudly call themselves or are suspected by others of being “progressives.”
From The Great Church Year, Karl Rahner, New York, NY, 1993. pages 217-18.
Pentecost and the Holy Spirit have been on my mind. Last week I was looking for a prayer Karl Rahner, a Jesuit theologian, wrote and couldn’t find it, but I did find this homily on Pentecost. It’s long so I’ll present it here in segments.
Pentecost: Fear of the Spirit
We are told in the Act of the Apostles (19:1-2) that Paul found some disciples at Ephesus and asked them: “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” They answered: “We have never even heard of the Holy Spirit.”
Many Christians today, if they were faced with the same question, ought really to answer: We We were told of the Holy Spirit in our religion instruction at school, we were baptized and confirmed, but that’s about all we’ve had to do with the Holy Spirit; we’ve not yet seen any trace of Him in our lives.
In fact, in this age of technology, of rational planned leadership of human beings, of mass media, of rational psychology and depth psychology, it isn’t easy for people today to discover within the field of their experience anything they might venture to call the efficacy of the Holy Spirit. There seems to be no scope for anything that is not secular within a “system” of intramundane causes and effects, without exit or entrance.
If we want to get rid of the impression of a secular world, in which there is nothing like a Holy Spirit, then we shall have to stop looking for him only under explicitly religious labels of the kind to which our religious training has accustomed us. If we look out for inner freedom in which a person, regardless of herself, remains faithful to the dictate of her conscience; if someone succeeds, without knowing how, in really breaking out of the prison of her egoism; if someone not only gets his pleasures and delights, but possesses joy which knows limit; if someone with mute resignation allows death to take her and at the same time entrusts herself to an ultimate mystery in which she believes as unity, meaning and love: when these things happen, what we Christians call the Holy Spirit is at work, precisely because in these and similar experiences what is involved is not a controllable and definable factor of the world of our experience. The Spirit is at work precisely because this world of experience is delivered up to its comprehensible ground, to its innermost center which is no longer its very own.
We Christians least of all need to think of this nameless Holy Spirit, “poured out upon all flesh,” as locked up within the walls of the church. Rather do we form the church as the community of those who confess explicitly in historical and social forms that God loved the world (not merely Christians) and make his Spirit the innermost dynamic principle of the world, through whom everyone finds God as his absolute future, as long as he does not cut himself off from God through the deep-rooted sin of the a whole life. If we see the gift of the Spirit to the world in this way, then it is perhaps not so difficult to find in this world the Holy Spirit in whom we profess our faith at Pentecost as our innermost mystery and even more as God’s mystery.
From The Great Church Year, Karl Rahner, New York, NY, 1993. pages 215-16.
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Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander 