The Love That Binds

With the celebration of Pentecost today we finally draw our observance of Eastertide to a close. At ninety days, it is the Church’s longest Privileged Season, beginning with Ash Wednesday, back on February 17th, including all of Lent and Holy Week as well as Easter, the Ascension and the Seven Sundays of Easter. In previous years, there was an Octave of Pentecost, just as we have an Octave for Christmas and Easter, but this was changed in 1969, returning us to Ordinary Time this Monday.
 
However, this Monday is observed as the Feast of The Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, given the fact that Mary was present at the first Pentecost. It will be she who leads us back into Ordinary Time which was interrupted on Shrove Tuesday. This new feast day was promulgated in 2018. In the “Ordo,” which sets the liturgical calendar, it is said of this feast, “The joyous veneration given to the Mother of God by the contemporary Church, in light of reflection on the mystery of Christ and on His nature, cannot ignore the figure of a woman, the Virgin Mary, who is both Mother of Christ and Mother of the Church."
 
The first two Sundays that follow Pentecost take precedence over Sundays in Ordinary Time. They are Trinity Sunday and Corpus Christi. It certainly makes sense that following the celebration of the Giving of the Holy Spirit we should celebrate these two dogmas that are at the core of our Catholic Faith and instilled through the millennia by the power of the Holy Spirit: God as Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit… and the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. These feasts are connected to Pentecost, so they, too, are “movable feasts,” recurring on different dates in different years.
 
Why do we celebrate Pentecost? A fellow once said to me, “It’s just another Sunday, as far as I’m concerned. We sing ‘Come, Holy Ghost,' the priest wears red vestments, and we go home and mow the lawn.” While the Lord Jesus has several Feast Days throughout the year, and God the Father shares His one Feast on Trinity Sunday… God the Holy Spirit is celebrated today as gift of both the Father and the Son, the life and power of the Church, the guarantor of Grace and the Father’s life-giving love. The Holy Spirit is the least comprehendible Person in the Holy Trinity, so difficult to perceive that He is depicted in art as a dove or as tongues of fire, and sometimes described as a rush of wind.
 
Yet, the Holy Spirit is equal in dignity to the Father and the Son. He is the love that binds them together. Given to the Church, He becomes the love that binds us to the Father and the Son, a force absolutely necessary for our salvation. So, as we sing “Come Holy Ghost” and listen to the Sequence “Veni Creator Spiritus” (Come, Creator Spirit)… take in the aroma of incense… watch as the Paschal Candle is removed in procession… let’s allow the beauty of this Feast to lift us up a bit closer to Heaven and closer to God whom we hope to meet both here in sacred liturgy and in the eternal, heavenly liturgy of praise which is our greatest hope.