Pentecost

Even with the watermarks, I love this photo:

Wonderful. More from Catholic Press Photo Agency here.

And from today's Mass:

The text of his homily is here:

But how to enter into the mystery of the Holy Spirit, how to understand the secret of Love? The pages of today’s Gospel take us today to the Cenacle where, once the last Supper was over, a sense of confusion saddened the Apostles. The reason was that the words of Jesus had raised worrying questions: He talked about hatred of the world for him and his followers, he talked about his mysterious departure and there were many other things yet to be said, but for the time being, the Apostles were not capable of carrying the burden (cfr Jn:16:32). To tackle them, he explains the meaning of his distance: he will leave, but he will return; in the meantime, he will not abandon them, he will not leave them orphans. He will send the Consoler, the Spirit of the Father, and it will be the Spirit who will lead them to understand that the work of Christ is a labour of love: the love of He who has sacrificed himself, the love of the Father who gave him up.

This is the mystery of Pentecost: the Holy Spirit enlightens the human spirit, and, revealing the crucified and resurrected Christ, shows the way to becoming more like Him, that is, to being ‘an expression and instrument of the love that emanates from him’ (Deus Caritas Est, 33). Gathered together with Mary, as it was at the time of its birth, the Church today prays: ‘Veni Sancte Spiritus! – Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love!’ Amen.

Comments

[Conor Dugan]

Does anyone know how to order pictures from the Catholic Press Photos? That is an awesome pic.

[Lynn]

Beautiful photo; thanks for posting it.
Happy Pentecost!

[Tim Ferguson]

I can imagine a new Where's Waldo book in the works...

[Lisa]

I saw the entire telecast -- absolutely fantastic! I don't know who was happier, the people or Il Papa ... but certainly, the happiest must have been God, to see such joy in His children and His shepherd!

[Woody Jones]

Her Honor and I were there with the rest of a Regnum Christi contingent (we wore the dark yellow tee-shirts a few of which show up in the picture) and it was just fantastic. Some Legionary priests who were not with our group kind of gravitated over toward us and one gave a marvelous pre-Mass meditation, on the Holy Spirit in our lives, to a youngster who was taping it all for a summer project. Of all the profound things he said, for some reason the thing that has stuck with me was his remark that we must, like Mary, meditate upon these things in silence: i.e. turn off the radio and the TV.

The priests who came down to give us Holy Communion ran out of Hosts, leaving one woman quietly sobbing. It was a lesson in itself.