PENTECOST SUNDAY - 2021

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful
and kindle in them the fire of your love.

ACTS 2:1-11

My Soul's Beloved,

Your Church speaks the universal language of love and because she chooses love above and before all she is often misunderstood even by those who belong to her.

Too often we wish she would take a whip to her enemies but she doesn't for she has a mother's tender and compassionate heart and prefers to woo with love. Many of us get impatient with her in our overzealous desire for her to enforce her power by coming down hard against her detractors and her enemies. But this is not her way because it is not the way of her Spouse and certainly not the way of the Holy Spirit who is the bond of love between Father and Son and who draws the Bride wholly into that sacred bond of love. 

Today as the Church celebrates her birthday let us unite our hearts and minds with that of Mary, Mother of the Church, and our Mother, along with Peter, the Apostles, and the disciples, let us pray with expectation and anticipation for a new Pentecost. The Church is in need of renewal once again - let us prepare for it through all the sufferings that the Church presently endures from her enemies, her detractors, her persecutors, and unite our personal sufferings with hers as well as Yours at Calvary.

The day is coming when the whole world will speak with one voice, one language, that of love, and she will have learned it from Your Bride who herself has been taught by the Holy Spirit. Send the strong winds of the Holy Spirit upon us now and consume us with the fire of Your divine love.

PSALM 104:1, 24, 29-30, 31, 34 

My Soul's Beloved, 

We have drifted so far away from the Spirit of Love, Light, and Truth. The foul miasma of hate, division, pride, and the spirit of the world is seeping into the Church, and evil, decay, destruction, and death seem imminent. Help us, Beloved, not to take our gaze away from You and from Your promises, rather, like the psalmist may we bless Your Name constantly and praise You with our whole being. 

It is easy to praise You, Lord if we begin to count our blessings. Let us look around us and contemplate with wonder the beauty of creation and Your works O Lord will inspire us to praise Your goodness and Your bountiful love for us.

Thank You for the gift of Your Holy Spirit who fills us with life and grace. The breath of the Spirit animates us and as long as He is in us we can praise You, our Lord, and our God. He teaches us how to recognize You not only around us but in us as well - for He makes our bodies the dwelling place of God.

GALATIANS 5:16-25 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

When we read and contemplate the lives of great saints we understand that we are given all we need to live in perfect peace and in perfect harmony with our brothers and sisters because the Holy Spirit Himself abides in us. The world and so many of us in it are given to all the sins that St. Paul lists in his letter to the Galatians. 

When self-indulgence is at work the results are obvious: fornication, gross indecency and sexual irresponsibility; idolatry and sorcery; feuds and wrangling, jealousy, bad temper and quarrels; disagreements, factions, envy; drunkenness, orgies and similar things. I warn you now, as I warned you before: those who behave like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

We are self-absorbed, obsessed with worldly frivolities, narrow-minded and overbearing, confident that our way is the only way and anyone who disagrees with us ought to be ostracised and destroyed. 

But there is another way - the way of the Holy Spirit and if only we Christians and especially Catholics took this road the world will soon welcome the Kingdom of God on earth. For:

What the Spirit brings is very different: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control. There can be no law against things like that, of course. You cannot belong to Christ Jesus unless you crucify all self-indulgent passions and desires.

 Since the Spirit is our life, let us be directed by the Spirit.

JOHN 15:26-27,16:12-15 ©

My Soul's Beloved, 

Truth is in extremely short supply in our world today. The world uses words to obfuscate the truth and to deny the reality of what they were always meant to convey. Definitions by which we understood reality are now a parody of the truth and the rich, the powerful, the influential, the pseudo-intellectual who is the darling of the world are prepared to go to any extremes to push a particular narrative at the expense of truth.

We know that Truth, as it is understood by the Church and by Your disciples, is not just a Word it is a Person. The Eternal Word became flesh and made His dwelling place with us. And when You ascended into heaven You did not leave us orphans but true to Your promises You sent us the Advocate, the Spirit of truth from the Father. 

The Church is unassailable, indestructible, and eternal because in Her dwells the fullness of Truth - the Holy Spirit. The Breath of God that hovered over the earth and brought order from chaos hovers over the world to this day and in the end will reign supreme. 

Over two thousand years have passed and through its long and often bloody history, for she has suffered at the hands of evil and her children have been slaughtered for Your sake and the sake of the Gospel, she has been faithful to the mission You entrusted to her. She has been Your most powerful witness from the first and she will continue to be Your most powerful and faithful witness to the end.  

She glorifies You, her Spouse, by her very presence in the world and by the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit who gives her life and she will do so until You come in glory to claim her as Your Bride for all eternity. Maranatha, Lord Jesus, Maranatha!