Dear Friends:
This weekend’s celebration of Pentecost brings to a close our fifty-day celebration of the central mystery of our faith, the Resurrection of Christ and all the hope that it promises us. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit constitutes a new and perennial way by which the Risen Lord is present and active in the world through his Church, which means through you and me. We share personally in the Pentecost event through our being confirmed, when we were signed on our foreheads by the bishop with the sacred oil of chrism. That moment confirmed us in our faith and dedication to the Risen Lord and imparted to us all the gifts we would need from God to fulfill our mission in life, whatever and however that mission unfolds.
By way of a reflection on Pentecost, I include here a meditation written by Pope St. Paul VI, who reigned from 1963-1978. It is titled “The Church’s Greatest Need” and I think that the thoughts of the pope then are relevant to our day, more than perhaps they were when they were written between fifty and sixty years ago.
What does the Church need?
The Church needs the Spirit, the Holy Spirit.
He it is who animates and sanctifies the Church.
He is her divine breath, the wind in her sails,
the principle of her unity, the inner source of her light and strength.
He is her support and consoler, her source of charisms and songs,
her peace and her joy, her pledge and prelude to blessed and eternal life.
The Church needs her perennial Pentecost.
She needs fire in her heart, words on her lips, prophecy in her outlook.
She needs to be the temple of the Holy Spirit.
In the empty silence of the modern world
the Church needs to feel rising
from the depths of her inmost personality,
a weeping, a poem, a prayer, a hymn—
the praying voice of the Spirit,
who prays in us and for us,
“with sighs too deep for words.”
She needs to listen in silence
and in an attitude of total availability
to the voice of the Spirit who teaches “every truth.”
The Church needs to feel flowing through all of her human faculties
a wave of love, that love which is called forth
and poured into our hearts
“by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
This is what the Church needs; she needs the Holy Spirit!
The Holy Spirit in us, in each of us,
and in all of us together, in us who are the Church.
So, let all of us ever say to him,
“Come.”