In the quiet suburb where I live, we are having an all night vigil on the eve of Pentecost, before the exposed Blessed Sacrament. This strikes me as an excellent idea, for there is much to pray for at this time of year.

First of all, the Pope, as he starts his ministry.

Secondly, we need to pray for evangelisation, something that Catholics are not particularly keen on, but need to be much keener on. Let us remember the disciples gathered in the upper room: they viewed the holiday crowds in Jerusalem with dread, assuming them to be hostile. But the Holy Spirit came, and transformed their perceptions: the anonymous crowd became a potential congregation, and the timid disciples became bold proclaimers of the Word. That is the sort of transformation that the contemporary Church needs.

Thirdly, we need to pray for vocations, and we need to realise that these do not grow on trees. We will only have vocations if we have clear and unequivocal Catholic teaching and Catholic practice, especially in the place that these two are most visible: at Mass.

So that is a lot of praying that needs to be done!

I have also noticed, alas too late, that the eve of Pentecost clashes with the final of the Eurovision Song Contest. Well, something has got to give, and there is always a cost to discipleship.

I first watched the contest in 1971, when I was allowed to stay up late to do so. This was the year when Malta first entered and came bottom. I was very young, but the disappointment was very hard to take, even then. And over the years I have hoped that one day Malta would win. Now, 42 years later, is it possible that her time has come? I have not listened to all the songs by any means, but the Maltese entry, sung by Gianluca Bezzina, strikes me as excellent. Just what the doctor ordered – and of course, the man singing it is a doctor!

Have a look here and judge for yourself. It is nice that the Daily Mirror is supporting Gianluca; now he’s got the unshakeable allegiance of this paper, he must be unstoppable.

According to the figures, gathered by the Latin Mass Society, the high point for Catholicism was the 1960s, with high numbers of baptisms, ordinations and marriages in 1964, 1965 and 1968 respectively, before a dramatic fall-off in each case. Receptions into the Church peaked in 1959; in recent years they have been just a third of that level.

The number of baptisms today is less than half those in 1964, and the number of Catholic marriages is less than a quarter of those in 1968. But it is ordinations of new priests that have shown the most alarming fall, to only a tenth of the 1965 figure.
Most of the figures in the study go back as far as 1913, giving a remarkable picture of the state of the Catholic Church in England and Wales over a century.

Dr Joseph Shaw, chairman of the Latin Mass Society, who led the research, said the figures “show unambiguously that something went seriously wrong in the Church in England and Wales in the 1960s and 1970s. Catholics ceased quite suddenly to see the value of getting married, having large families, and having their children baptised. Non-Catholics no longer perceived the Church as the ark of salvation, and ceased to seek admission. Young men no longer offered themselves for the priesthood in the same numbers as before.”

Dr Shaw suggests a connection to “the wrenching changes in the Church at that time introduced by the Second Vatican Council”.
The number of priests in England and Wales rose steadily from 3,838 in 1912 to a peak of 7,887 in 1965, before beginning to tail off. It recovered for a while in the mid-1990s, but fell to 5,264 in 2011. “In this respect we are still living on our capital, and this capital is about to run out,” he said.

In 1965 there were 233 ordinations but since then there has been a steady fall, reaching double figures by 1981. The lowest point was reached in 2009, with only 14 ordinations. 2010 showed a marked improvement, with 23, only to drop again to 16 in 2011.

Because the number of Catholics in England and Wales has increased, the number of priests per 100,000 Catholics has halved since 1947, from 268 to 135 in 2010.

In contrast, the numbers of both men and women joining religious orders, although small, have increased in recent years, according to Sister Cathy Jones, religious life promoter in the National Office of Vocation of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales.

“The past few years have seen an upturn in people joining the religious life rather than continuing the downward trajectory,” she said.

In 2012, 30 men joined priestly orders, a rise from 19 in each of the three previous years, and the most since 1996. There has also been a significant rise in women joining active orders, from six in 2009 to 23 in 2012.

Sister Cathy attributed this rise to “the way many young Catholics are confident about their faith and want to give their all”, along with “more support structures for people thinking of joining the religious life”.

In the figures released by the Latin Mass Society, baptisms rose to a peak of 137,673 in 1964 before falling to 63,962 in 2010. Catholic marriages rose from 13,201 in 1913 to a peak of 47,417 in 1968 before falling to a low point of just 9,932 in 2008.
Receptions into the Church were at their highest in 1959 with 15,794, but fell away dramatically to a low of 3,829 in 2005 before rising to 5,809 in 2010.

The estimated number of Catholics in England and Wales has increased from 1.8 million in 1912 to just over four million in 2010. When this is taken into consideration, the fall-off in ordinations, baptisms, marriages and receptions is even more stark. From a high point of 10.6 ordinations per thousand Catholics in 1937, the proportion fell to 0.6 in 2010, though this was an improvement on the previous year at 0.3.

Bergoglio continued: “One may also deny Communion to a known sinner who has not repented” but acknowledged that “it is very difficult to prove these things.” He added, “Receiving Communion means receiving the body of the Lord, with the awareness of forming a community. But if a man, rather than uniting the people of God, has devastated the lives of many persons, he cannot receive Communion. It would be a total contradiction.” He described such behaviour as “spiritual hypocrisy” and “leading a double life.”

Magister comments that the Holy Father might sense the same danger, now that he is Pope, and so “for this reason, he would be adopting the same prudential conduct.” The then Archbishop used the example of economic malpractice, but as Magister comments, the same principle applies to “public support for pro-abortion laws on the part of politicians who profess themselves to be Catholic.” He also points out that on March 19, for the inaugural Mass of Pope Francis’s pontificate, Vice- President Joe Biden and Leader of the Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, both publicly pro-abortion and both Catholic, were present “and both received Communion” – but not from the hands of the Pope “who was seated behind the altar.”

In a further commentary on this principle, CFNews for May 12 has an item about the Republic of Ireland. It seems that Cardinal Sean Brady has stated that the Irish bishops have not considered barring politicians who vote to legalise abortion from receiving Communion. This is currently a pressing concern in the Republic, as on April 30 the coalition government introduced a “Protection of Life during Pregnancy” bill which would allow doctors to abort a child in cases where the mother’s life is threatened – including if she threatens suicide, a very wide and loose provision. According to Cardinal Brady – clearly picking his words carefully – politicians “would have to follow their own conscience” and that among the bishops “there would be a great reluctance to politicize the Eucharist.”

What on earth can he mean by this? Surely receiving Communion signifies being in communion with your fellow communicants within the ecclesial community? And if you are out of communion on a matter as fundamental as the right to life, surely you have chosen to cut yourself off from the community of fellow worshippers? Father Ray Blake, a popular blogger, quoted in the same CFNews item above, writes of the “hypocrisy and cant” of many ecclesiastics, adding that Cardinal Brady “wishes to strip the Eucharist of any meaning of Communion, or morality, and render it a meaningless symbol.” He commented, “What Brady seems to be suggesting is that there should be no connection with morality and belief.”

Former Pope Benedict XVI would seem to agree with Fr Ray Blake rather than with Cardinal Brady. In a letter of 2004 to the US bishops, entitled “Worthiness to receive Holy Communion”, the then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that when politicians continue to have “formal cooperation” with abortion, “the minister of Holy Communion must refuse to distribute it” to him. No problems here with scruples about “politicization” I note.
See in this light, and to avoid all possible scandal, Pope Francis’s behaviour seems entirely prudent.

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said the pavilion, that will be paid for by sponsors, represents part of the Vatican’s attempt to initiate a dialogue with modern artists. The exhibition runs from June 1 – November 24, with the Vatican hosting one of 88 national pavilions.

“In the pavilion we will not present art destined for the liturgy and sacred spaces, this is not our task,” Cardinal Ravasi said. “We want to rebuild relations between art and faith, a relationship that went through a divorce, although not all contact was severed.”

For decades, he said, “art went its way, looking back at religion once in a while, though often critically or even blasphemously.”

The Vatican has chosen to begin its new relationship with artists by looking at the beginnings of faith and of the universe as recounted in the first 11 chapters of the Book of Genesis, he said, proposing the themes of creation, destruction and rebirth. “We didn’t want to go to artists and say, ‘Make us three crosses in three different styles’ or ‘three Virgin Marys,’” he said, but “to offer them a fundamental text and begin a dialogue.”

After discussing the project with a dozen artists, three were commissioned to create works in different media for the Vatican space. Studio Azzuro, an Italian multimedia group, will create an interactive video installation on the theme “creation.” Czech photographer Josef Koudelka will exhibit 18 photographs on the theme “de-creation” or destruction, and the painter Lawrence Carroll, who often re-uses materials to suspend on his canvases, will present works on the theme of “re-creation” or “another life.”

“It was a privilege to be asked to show at the Vatican’s first pavilion, to show at the Venice Biennale,” said Carroll, who was born in Australia and raised in the United States. Carroll added he’s still completing the sculpture and five paintings, including a frozen one that melts and freezes again, he hopes to show in Venice.

At the entrance to the exhibit the Vatican will display three paintings by Tano Festa, an Italian painter and expert on Michelangelo. The works by Festa, who died in 1988, pay homage to Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes of the creation of Adam and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.

Antonio Paolucci, the director of the Vatican Museums and curator of the Vatican’s Venice exhibit, said the idea was to provide a bridge back to the great art commissioned by and created for the church, which communicates with people of every era and from any background.

Ushered in by his secretary, Fr Kickham, I set up for the interview in a plush drawing room that has a very energetic cat jumping around. Cardinal O’Malley, dressed in his trademark brown habit with rosary beads around his waist strolls slowly in.

“It’s so good to see you!” I gush, overflowing with sincere verve. “Really?” Cardinal Seán asks unassumingly, as he sits down with a mug of cocoa.

“Yes!” I exclaim, and resist the temptation to spout that it’s an honour to interview the cardinal who was Papabile in the 2013 Conclave and has just been made an adviser on curial reform.

Our first order of business is to discuss our shared Irishness, and people that we know from west Cork. But that’s where our similarities end. From the minute that I plonk my Dictaphone on the table, it’s clear that Cardinal O’Malley and I are polar-opposite personalities. I am a restless, can’t-stop-moving person and run on nervous energy. Cardinal O’Malley is still, calm and radiates a real and palpable peacefulness. He’s much more easy-going Irish than me.

A man of such high standing could be haughty, but he insists on being called Cardinal Seán. A west of Ireland man – “my mother’s family is from Mayo, and my father’s family is from Clare” – he has that pale, almost translucent Irish skin and freckles dot his broad forehead. And by doing this interview, this “super cardinal” is joining the struggle to keep abortion out of Ireland. During the days before Cardinal Seán and I agreed that this interview would be a discussion on rebutting the pro-abortion bombast that is being used to patronise and silence the Irish pro-life voice.

His cool demeanour disappears on being asked why Ireland, a small island, should resist abortion legislation that the rest of the world has largely implemented. “Abortion is the taking of an innocent human life, everyone should resist abortion! Ireland has the good fortune, in part thanks to Catholic sensibilities, that her people have been opposed to abortion despite the great pressure that they have come under from secularising forces,” he says with fervour.

Taking his lead on the subject of “great pressure” from “secularising forces”, I suggest that since X Case was going through the Irish courts in 1992, one manipulative scheme used by pro-abortion factions is to belittle Ireland’s ban on abortion as primitive and archaic. Cardinal O’Malley does not entertain the idea that Ireland is “archaic”, and states firmly: “Ireland should be very proud of its pro-life heritage and how traditionally there has been great importance given to human life.” Tapping himself on the chest, he emphasises: “I am very proud that in Ireland every life counts, even when it is so vulnerable, like the unborn. I hope that Ireland will continue to stand up against the pressures – I know the pressures are there. Pressure to legislate for abortion is a dehumanising force in our world.”

The tactic of portraying Ireland and pro-lifers as old-fashioned prompts Cardinal O’Malley to reminisce that at the time of abortion legislation in America there was a popular opinion that “people opposed to abortion will die off, they’ll go away. But, of course, 40 years later the pro-abortion movement is on the run, they see that the number of pro-life people has increased and is getting younger.”

But just because abortions are not performed in Ireland does not mean that Irish girls are not having abortions. What does he think of the thousands of girls who go across the Irish Sea to England for abortions? One argument used by pro-choice campaigners in Ireland is that women will have abortions anyway, and that it’s anti-woman that they are forced to travel.

Speaking very gently, he counters this: “The fact that they actually have to leave Ireland to have an abortion is a deterrent and it also teaches people that it is wrong. The laws have a function of teaching what is right and wrong. And simply because someone is going to do something does not mean that we have to facilitate it, condone it, or encourage it. Changing the laws would facilitate, condone and encourage abortion in Ireland.” And for wider Irish society, why would it be good for abortion to remain illegal? Cardinal Seán answers in his deep voice: “Abortion undermines people’s humanity and makes us insensitive to the suffering of others.”

I tell Cardinal Seán that Irish women are being challenged that they are not in control of their bodies, because abortion is not available on request. He raises his voice: “It is a justification that a woman can do what she wants with her body, but what about the baby’s body? And how about the gender selection of abortions that take place? Where are the feminists arguing against abortion for baby girls? Here in America, we have not been able to put in place legislation that would prevent abortions that are done because the baby is a girl.”

The most pressing issue is the mendacious-sounding name, “The Protection of Life During Pregnancy”, a piece of legislation that, if enacted, would allow for suicidal women to be given an abortion. There is no time limit stipulation in the Bill, so theoretically a woman who is in the latest stages of pregnancy, but who has demonstrated suicidal tendencies to three doctors, may get an abortion. The syllogism being that a woman who may be suicidal because of her pregnancy must be rid of the baby in order to get better. He rejects the idea that abortion is the necessary solution: “If any woman is suicidal, she must be given treatment for depression. If she has an abortion, there are greater chances that she will be depressed and suicidal as a result of having had an abortion.

“There are many cases of women who have had abortions, then nine months after the child was conceived, around the time that the child would have been born, the woman goes into a false labour. Biologically she is aware that she would have been having a child at that time.”

It’s all well and good to condemn abortion when the mother is depressed at the thought of raising a baby, but does Cardinal Seán have an alternative? I expect an answer based on better childcare possibilities and monetary support for single mothers. But he responds quickly with, “one thing that I’m very focused on right now is how we might market adoption better. I am realising how negative the attitude is towards adoption. We can say very glibly, ‘adoption, not abortion’. But when a woman is in a difficult pregnancy, she doesn’t want to hear that, and she sees adoption as a continuation of her problems, and that she will be a bad mother by giving her child away, where the child might be abused or discriminated against. We need to change that attitude, because otherwise we will never be able to counter abortion.”

This answer stumps me, because I grew up not knowing any person my own age who was adopted, and I was told it was a practice of the past. I want to know why he has such a positive view of adoption. “Growing up here in the States, we all had friends who were adopted children. In today’s world, many Americans do not know anyone who was adopted. This is no longer something that American women do – give a child up for adoption.

“There is one adoption for every 100 abortions, and at the same time you have all these childless couples who are so anxious for a baby, and many of them do IVF, where human life is being destroyed in ‘extra embryos’.” How does he plan to encourage adoption?  “We have to do a better job of showing the positive side of adoption and making it more user-friendly for the mother.”

Cardinal Seán is not a textbook ideology-only pro-lifer, but has vast experience in the one-to-one care of pregnant women. “My heart is always with women in difficult pregnancies. Sometimes they are in dire straits. When I was in Washington, I ran a social service agency where we had a medical clinic and the people that we served were undocumented, and did not have access to insurance, and so they were under a lot of pressure to have abortions. If an illegal immigrant has no insurance, the medical bills cost thousands of dollars. We arranged for their medical expenses to be taken care of, and for their pre-natal care to be provided.

“When I was bishop of the West Indies, we started a pre-natal care programme there to help teenage girls. Before the programme, the West Indies had one of the highest infant mortality rates, and so, over the years, we reduced the infant mortality rate to zero”.

Offering my congratulations to Cardinal Seán for this achievement, which showed great willpower and perseverance, we take a reprieve from talking about pro-life, turning our attention to Padre Pio, comparing our devotion to his fellow Franciscan, the mystic who used to describe himself as “a simple friar who prays”. He never met Padre Pio, but has celebrated Mass at his tomb, and visited San Giovanna di Rotondo many times.

His favourite account of St Pio’s intercession goes back to the time that Blessed John Paul II was Archbishop of Krakow and he wrote a letter to Padre Pio, asking his prayers for his dear friend Wanda Półtawska. Wanda was a professor at Kraków University, and was dying of throat cancer. Apparently, Padre Pio held up the letter from the then Archbishop Wojtyła and said that the Polish archbishop was destined for great things, and that he would do his utmost to win a miraculous cure for Wanda. Wanda made a full recovery.  The reason that Cardinal Seán likes this account so much is because “it’s about John Paul II in contact with Padre Pio, the two saints coming together”.

What is it about Padre Pio, the priest, that impresses Cardinal Seán?  “I am in awe of Padre Pio’s ministry in the confessional. Much like the Divine Mercy devotion there is a hunger for mercy in the world. Padre Pio, in the confessional, was a manifestation of the merciful Christ. His whole ministry was healing people’s souls in the confessional and his concern for the sick when he arranged for the Hospital for the Relief of Suffering to be built.”

This generation of Catholics will know a re-awakening of Franciscan spirituality, thanks to Pope Francis. They met four years ago in Buenos Aires, and have always spoken in Spanish.

Cardinal Seán writes to Pope Francis as often as possible and mentions that since he has been made an adviser on Curial reform: “I feel a certain obligation to keep in constant contact with the Pope”. But he concedes that “there just hasn’t been much time” and he is still getting to grips with his new appointment as a super cardinal. When I suggest that it’s been an exhausting, emotionally draining time, he says, “It’s been like trying to drink water from a fire hydrant!”

April has been an exceptionally testing time for Boston, and he has spent much time in the company of the victims of the marathon bombing, and tells me that he visited the little sister of Martin Richard. At the tender age of six, she has lost her foot and has severe burns.

Throughout these busy weeks, Cardinal Seán has continued to update his blog, a platform where he showcases positive events in the Church. He dictates it to his secretary, but I want to know why he gives his blog priority, even during the most demanding of times.

“Everyone talks about the bad things that happen in Boston. My blog gives me the opportunity to talk about the good things that are happening in Boston.” We discuss the pros and cons of blogs, that they can be used as tools to smear others but they can also be places where people can have life-changing encounters with the Catholic faith. Cardinal O’Malley comes down on the side that blogs are a good thing, and concludes: “There is so much good to be accomplished with blogs. Some blogs can be great a great instrument of Catholic evangelisation.”

We finish our conversation, and walk out to the entrance of the rectory. On saying our goodbyes, I have an instinct to ask Cardinal O’Malley’s prayers for a friend of mine who is suffering after an abortion and gets distressed every week when the day that she had her abortion comes round. “I will, of course, pray for her. You can be sure that my prayers are with her,” he says earnestly.

It is a great boon for the pro-lifers of the world, and not just in Ireland, that Pope Francis has appointed Cardinal O’Malley one of the “super Cardinals”, or the “G8”. Not just because he has hands-on experience in coming to the aid of pregnant mothers, but because he has resolute determination to speak out on behalf of small Catholic countries like Ireland. We can take comfort that with an adviser like Cardinal O’Malley, pro-life matters will be top of the agenda during Pope Francis’s pontificate.

Mary O’Regan is a journalist and producer on the forthcoming television show Extraordinary Faith

This article first appeared in the print edition of The Catholic Herald dated 10/5/13

In a homily at a Mass for the Union of Catholic Mothers on Tuesday, Bishop Mark Davies said the Holy Father had become “the focus of fascination” in the press, partly because of his “evident goodness”, “informal style” and “Christian simplicity”.

But this has been used by some commentators to further their own agenda of seeking a change to Church teaching, the bishop said.

He went on to remind the congregation gathered for the National Council meeting of the UCM in Swanwick, Derbyshire, that the loyalty and love that Catholics shared for the Pope flowed principally from his office as Successor of St Peter and his responsibility as the chief shepherd of Christ’s universal Church.

It is only from the supernatural perspective of faith that the ministry of Pope Francis can be properly understood, the bishop said, adding that the simplicity Catholics see in Pope Francis “leads us not towards abandoning the demands of the faith, as some commentators might hope or suppose, but directly to those demands in their most radical, beautiful and uncompromising essence”.

“I can’t remember how many times I have been asked, everywhere from radio stations to petrol stations, whether I liked the new Pope. To the Catholic mind this is a strange question as the loyalty we owe to the Pope is not based upon personal ‘likes’ or ‘dislikes’. My invariable reply is that ‘We love the Pope whoever he is’. This may seem just as puzzling to my questioners,” he said.

“Those long experienced in the media warn of something we may already see taking shape and will require of us the very supernatural perspective Pope Francis urges. They tell of how a public personality can be built up in the media. In this case, it is based on the Pope’s evident goodness and an informal style which is then contrasted even with his most saintly predecessors.

“Expectations are subtly or less subtly raised that this is the man who will change the Catholic faith itself in accordance with the commentator’s own wishes and agenda.”

He said that when a Pontiff fails to conform to “false expectations a souring begins to take place”, adding: “I noticed only last week a concern being expressed in our national media that our Holy Father is proving as ‘hard-line’ as his predecessors,” he said. “We know, as Catholics, that the loyalty we owe to the Pope is greater than the passing loyalties people give to political figures or celebrity personalities.”

Celestine, baptised Pietro, was born in 1215, the 11th of 12 children in a peasant family living on the northern border of the kingdom of Naples.

While still in his teens, he joined a Benedictine monastery before going to live as a hermit in the wild Abruzzi mountains.

At some stage Pietro was ordained. He continued, however, to dedicate himself to extreme mortifications in a cave on Mount Morrone, some 70 miles east of Rome.

Like many holy men determined to shun humanity, Pietro was soon surrounded by disciples. Nor did he diminish his appeal by retiring in 1245 to the still more inaccessible heights of Mount Maiella.

In 1259 the local bishop allowed Pietro to build the church of Santa Maria at the foot of Mount Morrone. Five years later Pope Urban IV recognised his followers as a special order of the Benedictines, who came to be known as Celestines.

So Pietro became involved with the great world. He travelled to Lyon, where he met Pope Gregory X, and secured the new order independence from episcopal control.

His reputation as an ascetic, miracle-worker and monastic leader grew. In 1278 King Charles I of Naples and Sicily took Santa Maria under royal protection.

In 1293, Pietro, now about 78, relinquished direction of the community, and once more retired to a grotto on Mount Morrone.

From April 1292 there had been a period without a pope, as the Colonna and Orsini families manoeuvred for the election of their respective candidates. In June 1294, however, Pietro suddenly warned that divine retribution would follow if the Church were left any longer without a leader. The 12 Cardinal-electors responded by choosing the old man himself as Pope.

Although this astonishing turn reduced Pietro to tears, he decided to accept the office. Acclaimed as “Papa Angelicus”, he rode on a donkey to L’Aquila, where he was installed as Celestine V. Holiness, however, proved an insufficient qualification.

Completely out of his depth, he followed the instructions of King Charles II of Naples and Sicily, to the ill-concealed fury of that monarch’s political opponents. Only in showering privileges upon his own congregation did Celestine show initiative.

Aware of his incapacity, he issued a decree establishing his right to abdicate, and stepped down on December 13 1294, after 161 days in office.

He longed to return to his cave on Mount Morrone, but his successor, Pope Boniface VIII, kept him confined until his death on May 19 1296 in a tower near Rome. Celestine was canonised in 1313.

Divine Office Week III

Sunday, May 19: Pentecost Sunday
Gn 11:1-9; Ex 19:3-8A, 16-20B; Ez 37:1-14; Jl 3:1-5; Ps 104; Rom 8: 22-27; Jn 7:37-39;
Acts 2:1-11 Ps 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34; 1 Cor 12:3B-7, 12-13; Rom 8:8-17; Jn 20:19-23; Jn 14:15-16, 23B-26
Monday, May 20: Weekday in Ordinary Time Sir 1:1-10; Ps 93; Mk 9:14-29
Tuesday, May 21: Weekday in Ordinary Time Sir 2:1-11; Ps 37; Mk 9:30-37
Wednesday, May 22: Weekday in Ordinary Time Sir 4:11-19; Ps 119:165, 168, 171, 172, 174, 175; Mk 9:38-40
Thursday, May 23: Weekday in Ordinary Time Sir 5:1-8; Ps 1:1-2, 3, 4 and 6; Mk 9:41-50
Friday, May 24: Weekday in Ordinary Time Sir 6:5-17; Ps 119; Ps
Saturday, May 25: St Bede the Venerable Sir 17:1-15; Ps 103:13-14, 15-16, 17-18; Mk 10:13-16

Extraordinary Form

Sunday, May 19: Pentecost
Acts 2:1-11; John 14:23-31
Monday, May 20: Whit Monday
Acts 10:34,42-48; John 3:16-21
Tuesday, May 21: Whit Tuesday
Acts 8:14-17; John 10:1-10
Wednesday, May 22: Whit Wednesday (Ember Day)
Acts 2:14-21; Acts 5:12-16; John 6:44-52
Thursday, May 23: Whit Thursday
Acts 8:5-8; Luke 9:1-6
Friday, May 24: Whit Friday (Ember Day) Joel 2:23-27; Luke 5:17-26
Saturday, May 25: Whit Saturday (Ember Day) Joel 2:28-32; Leviticus 23:9-21; Deuteronomy 26:1-11;
Leviticus 26:3-12; Isaias 45:1-8; Romans 5:1-5; Luke 4:38-44

The gift of the Holy Spirit, whose outpouring we celebrate at Pentecost, is the living heart of faith. During this year of faith Paul’s words remind us that faith is not our own achievement: it is the gift of the Holy Spirit at work in our hearts. Intellectually we can, and must, formulate our faith in a manner that is coherent and understandable to the world.

St Paul gives us a wonderful example of this in his many letters. Such formulations are not, in themselves, the living faith that makes us one with Christ our Risen Lord. When Saint Paul stated so emphatically that “no one can say Jesus is Lord” unless he is under the influence of the Spirit, he was emphasising the life-changing dimension that the Spirit alone brings to faith.

To proclaim Jesus as Lord is to entrust all that we are, and hope to become, to Christ as the Lord of our lives. Such a faith commitment fundamentally changes the priorities of lives touched by sin, making us one with Christ. At Pentecost let us pray that the Spirit might renew such faith in our lives.

The Holy Spirit enriches, and never obliterates, the unique personality of each person to whom it is entrusted.

“The particular way in which the Spirit is given to each person is for a good purpose.”

During this year of faith, and especially at Pentecost, let us strive to recognise and acknowledge the work of the Holy Spirit in each member of our families and congregations. We are indeed diverse, and frequently isolated by busy lives. Pentecost reminds us, in the words of St Paul, that though we are many, we are one. This is the greatest achievement of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit respects our differences, putting them at the service of Christ, in whom we become a living Body.

“In the one Spirit we were all baptised, and one Spirit was given to us all to drink.”

The familiar description of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles underlines the profound change of heart that the Holy Spirit brought about both in the apostles and those who heard their gospel proclamation.

The Holy Spirit enabled the apostles to proclaim the gospel with a conviction that reached far beyond any merely human persuasion. Now they spoke not from themselves, but from the strength and power of the Holy Spirit at work in their lives. They spoke from the heart to the heart. The same Spirit was at work in those who listened, enabling them to understand despite their many differences. As we prepare to bring the gospel to the world in a new evangelisation, let us begin our undertaking with the same Holy Spirit. Then, like the apostles at Pentecost, our conviction will come from God, and a God-given understanding will lead an unbelieving world to the gospel.

St John’s Gospel underlines the fundamental qualities that will enable a new Pentecost in the Church. As Christ breathed the Holy Spirit into his disciples, enabling their mission, two gifts were underlined: peace and forgiveness.

“He said to them ‘Peace be with you,’ and showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were filled with joy, and he said to them again ‘Peace be with you.’ ”

The peace that entered their very being would be communicated to the world in a ministry of reconciliation and forgiveness. “Receive the Holy Spirit. For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven.” It is through patient understanding, peace and reconciliation that the Spirit speaks to our world.

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