This Sunday we celebrate the Solemnity of Pentecost, commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles at the beginning of the history of the Church (Acts 2:1-4). This feast is a celebration not simply of a past event but a present reality, for “from the beginning to the end of time, whenever God sends his Son, he always sends his Spirit …” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 743). Our Lord, always at work in his sacraments, gives us to share in the life of the Spirit and thus makes us living members of his Body, the Church. “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body … and all were made to drink of one Spirit.” (1 Cor. 12:13).
The feast of Pentecost has a special significance in the Congregation of the Oratory, for it was on the eve of this feast in 1544 that St Philip Neri experienced, by a mysterious supernatural gift, a visible personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the catacomb of St Sebastian in Rome, signalling that intense devotion to the Third Person of the Holy Trinity for which our Saint is specially known. As this year we celebrate St Philip’s feast two days after Pentecost, we pray that we, sons and daughters of this gentle and loving Father, may, by the gift of the same Spirit, be ever more united in the bond of Christian charity: “And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.” (Col. 3:14-15).
(Image: Descent of the Holy Spirit, frescoed church ceiling in Vaskút, Bács-Kiskun, Hungary)