How can you be open to the New Pentecost in your life? - Daily Reflections May 24,2015

A NEW PENTECOST

 

Happy birthday, Church! Fifty days after the celebration of the Easter Vigil, we are now celebrating Jesus’ greatest gift to us — the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit enables us to live fully as a faithful Christian. In the life of the Church, we celebrate the event that empowered the Apostles 50 days after Jesus’ resurrection.

       The story of the Pentecost is given to us annually from Acts 2:1-11, according to Luke the Evangelist. He describes it as a  spectacular event in his wonderful artistic style of storytelling. All the Apostles are in the Upper Room, the same place where Jesus had His Last Supper. They are praying for the promise of the Father. All of them are filled with the Holy Spirit. Light, wind and noise fill the room — a wonderful event beyond all telling.

       The famous prayer of St. John XXIII at the opening of the Council remains the same for us today: “Renew your wonders in this our day, as by a new Pentecost.” Similarly, years later, we hear a testimony of a young student asking for the grace of Pentecost. In her own words, Patti Gallagher Mansfield says: “Lord, I believe I’ve already received your Spirit in baptism and confirmation. But if it’s possible for Your Spirit to be more at work in my life than He’s been up until now, I want it!” She continues: “Like the Apostles after Pentecost, we couldn’t help but speak of the things we had seen and heard. We literally stumbled into Charismatic gifts like prophecy, discernment of spirits, and healing. One of our professors witnessed to his friends at Notre Dame and Michigan State University in these words: ‘I no  longer have to believe in Pentecost; I have seen it!’”

       Let us once again pray with inspiration the prayer of St. John XXIII. Let us have the same inspiration of Patti Gallagher Mansfield that we, too, will receive the power of the Holy Spirit. Fr. Brian Steele, MGL

 

REFLECTION QUESTION: How can you be open to the New Pentecost in your life?

 

Light Immortal, Light Divine, visit Thou these hearts of thine and our inmost being fill. Amen. (Taken from Sequence of Pentecost)