Dominica Pentecostes ~ I. classis
There is perhaps no day in the sacred Cycle, save the Paschal Solemnity itself, upon which the Church arrays herself in such fiery splendour as upon this Dominica Pentecostes. The vestments are red — rubricatae vestes — signifying both the tongues of flame that descended upon the Apostles and the charity which the Holy Ghost pours forth into the hearts of the faithful. The Octave that follows, the great Ember Days of summer, the Veni Creator Spiritus intoned at every solemn function — all of this proclaims that the Church has now received Her full constitution, Her armament, Her interior life. What was prepared at Calvary and inaugurated at the Resurrection is, on this day, breathed into the Mystical Body.
Let us therefore consider the two pericopes set before us by Holy Mother Church in the Sacred Liturgy: the Lesson from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2:1-11) and the Holy Gospel according to St. John (John 14:23-31). Each illumines the other, and both unveil the mysterium pietatis of the Third Person of the most Holy Trinity.
I. Cum complerentur dies Pentecostes — The Lesson from the Acts
St. Luke writes: <br>“And when the days of the Pentecost were accomplished, they were all together in one place: and suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a mighty wind coming, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them parted tongues as it were of fire, and it sat upon every one of them: and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they began to speak with divers tongues, according as the Holy Ghost gave them to speak.” (Acts 2:1-4, Douay-Rheims)
Cum complerentur — The Fulness of Time
The Evangelist’s choice of words is not accidental. Cum complerentur — when they were fulfilled, completed. St. Bede the Venerable, in his commentary upon the Acts, observes that the Holy Ghost descended not upon an arbitrary day, but precisely upon the fiftieth day after the Resurrection, that the figures of the Old Law might be perfected in the New. For upon the fiftieth day after the Paschal Lamb of Egypt was slain, the Law was given to Moses upon Sinai amidst thunder, fire, and the sound of trumpets (Exodus 19). Now, upon the fiftieth day after the immolation of the True Paschal Lamb, the New Law — which is no longer written upon tables of stone but upon the fleshly tables of the heart (cf. 2 Cor. 3:3) — is given to the Apostles by the descent of the Spirit of Love.
St. Augustine, preaching upon this day, makes the comparison luminous: “There the people stood afar off in terror; here they were gathered together within. There the finger of God wrote upon stone; here upon hearts. There the Law was given by means of a servant; here by means of the Lord Himself.” (cf. Sermo 155 De tempore) The fire of Sinai was a fire of fear; the fire of the Cenacle is a fire of charity.
Sonus tamquam advenientis spiritus vehementis — The Sound and the Fire
The Holy Ghost manifests Himself under two sensible signs: sonus and ignis, wind and fire. St. Gregory the Great, in his Homily for this feast (Hom. in Evang. XXX), notes with characteristic depth that fire bears a twofold property: it illumines and it consumes. So too the Holy Ghost: He illumines the intellect with the splendour of truth and consumes from the soul the rust of sin and tepidity. Ignis enim Deus noster est — “for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29).
That the tongues were divisae — parted, distributed — signifies, as St. John Chrysostom teaches in his Homilies on the Acts (Hom. IV), the diversity of charismatic gifts proceeding from one and the selfsame Spirit, “dividing to every one according as he will” (1 Cor. 12:11). The Apostles do not receive separate spirits, but one Spirit in the manifold splendour of His operations. Here is the seed of that unitas in pluralitate which is the very form of the Catholic Church: one Body, many members; one Faith, many tongues; one Sacrifice, offered in every nation under heaven.
Coeperunt loqui variis linguis — The Reversal of Babel
Mark well, dear reader, what follows. The Apostles, simple Galilæans, begin to speak in the tongues of Parthians and Medes, Elamites and Mesopotamians, dwellers in Judæa and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and Libya, Romans and Cretans and Arabians. St. Augustine, with that synthetic genius which is his hallmark, perceives here the precise undoing of the curse of Babel (Gen. 11). At Babel, pride scattered the tongues of men and divided the human family; at Pentecost, charity unites the tongues of men in one Gospel. “Pride had divided tongues; humility gathered them together. Babel scattered, the Church gathers.” (cf. Enarr. in Ps. 54)
This is no mere historical curiosity. It is the raison d’être of the Church’s catholicity. The Holy Ghost, descending upon the Apostles, sends them forth ad omnes gentes — to all nations — and constitutes the Church as the one ark of salvation for every tribe and tongue. The Traditional Roman Rite, in retaining the sacral Latin tongue, preserves something of this Pentecostal mystery: a single language sanctified for worship, transcending national divisions, uniting the faithful of every nation in one lex orandi.
II. Si quis diligit me — The Holy Gospel
Our Lord saith: “If any one love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our abode with him… But the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you.” (John 14:23, 26)
These words, spoken in the Cenacle on the night before His Passion, are read upon this day with surpassing fitness, for the Gospel pericope unveils the interior dimension of what the Lesson reveals exteriorly. Acts shows us the public, sensible, miraculous descent of the Spirit upon the nascent Church; the Gospel shows us the abiding, secret, sanctifying indwelling of the same Spirit within each soul in the state of grace.
Mansionem apud eum faciemus — The Divine Indwelling
The Angelic Doctor, treating of this passage in the Summa Theologiae (I, q. 43), draws from it the doctrine of the Mission and Indwelling of the Divine Persons. The Father and the Son come to the soul that loves and keeps the word — but they come through and with the Holy Ghost, who is sent into our hearts as the bond of charity (vinculum caritatis) between Father and Son. To possess the Holy Ghost is to possess the entire Trinity; for where one Divine Person is, there are all Three, propter circumincessionem — by reason of that ineffable mutual indwelling.
St. Cyril of Alexandria, commenting upon this verse, marvels that the immense and uncircumscribed God should deign to make His abode in the soul of man: “O the ineffable condescension! He whom the heavens cannot contain makes the heart of the believer His dwelling-place.” (cf. In Joannem IX). This is the dignity of the baptised soul in the state of grace — a dignity so exalted that, were we to see it as it truly is, we should fall down in adoration before our brother or our neighbour, as before a living temple.
Ille vos docebit omnia — The Spirit and the Magisterium
Our Lord promises that the Paraclete “will teach you all things, and bring all things to your mind.” Here is the divine foundation of that infallible teaching office which the Catholic Church alone possesses. The Holy Ghost was sent to the Apostles — and through them to their lawful successors, the Bishops in communion with the Roman Pontiff — to preserve the deposit of Faith from corruption and to unfold its riches in continuity with Tradition.
St. Vincent of Lérins gives us the venerable formula: quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est — that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all (Commonitorium II). The Holy Ghost does not innovate; He preserves. He does not contradict what He has revealed; He illumines it ever more deeply. Any “new gospel,” any rupture with what the Church has always held, cannot be the work of the Spirit of Truth, but of another spirit. The Apostle warns us sharply: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema.” (Gal. 1:8)
Pacem relinquo vobis — The Peace of Christ
The Gospel concludes with that sublime bequest: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, do I give unto you.” (John 14:27) St. Augustine, in his Tractates on John (Tract. LXXVII), distinguishes the peace of this present life — peace amidst tribulation, peace of conscience, peace of fraternal charity — from that consummate peace of the Beatific Vision, pax quae exuperat omnem sensum, the peace which surpasseth all understanding (Phil. 4:7). The Holy Ghost is the artisan of both: He pacifies the soul now by ordering its disordered passions, and He prepares it for that final peace in which God shall be all in all.
III. Practical Application: Veni, Sancte Spiritus
Dear reader, what shall we do upon this great Solemnity, that we be not numbered among those who receive the grace of God in vain (cf. 2 Cor. 6:1)?
First, let us examine whether we have grieved the Holy Ghost (Eph. 4:30) by mortal sin, by resistance to His inspirations, by tepidity in prayer, by failure to mortify our concupiscences. If so, let us hasten to the Sacrament of Penance, that the temple of our soul may be made worthy of His indwelling.
Second, let us implore the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost — Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety, and the Fear of the Lord — which St. Thomas teaches (S.Th. I-II, q. 68) are habitual dispositions whereby the soul becomes docile to the motion of the Spirit. The Sequence of the day, the Veni Sancte Spiritus of Innocent III — “Golden Sequence” — is itself a perfect catechesis and prayer for these gifts.
Third, let us recite, throughout the Octave, the great hymn Veni Creator Spiritus, attributed to Rabanus Maurus. To pray it devoutly is to draw down upon ourselves the fire of the Cenacle.
Fourth, let us assist at the Traditional Mass of Pentecost with especial recollection, marking the Sequence, the proper Preface of the Holy Ghost, the kneeling at the Veni Sancte Spiritus, and the joyful Alleluia that suffuses the entire Octave.
IV. A Collect for Meditation
Let us close with the Collect of the day, which compresses the entire mystery into a single jewel of liturgical prayer:
Deus, qui hodierna die corda fidelium Sancti Spiritus illustratione docuisti: da nobis in eodem Spiritu recta sapere; et de eius semper consolatione gaudere. Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum… in unitate eiusdem Spiritus Sancti…
“O God, who on this day didst instruct the hearts of the faithful by the light of the Holy Ghost: grant us in the same Spirit to relish what is right, and ever to rejoice in His consolation. Through our Lord Jesus Christ… in the unity of the same Holy Ghost…”
Note the precision of the petition: recta sapere — to taste, to savour, what is right. The verb sapere in classical Latin denotes not merely intellectual knowledge but an experiential, savoured wisdom — the very meaning of sapientia, that highest Gift of the Holy Ghost whereby the soul tastes and sees that the Lord is sweet (Ps. 33:9).
Veni, Sancte Spiritus, reple tuorum corda fidelium, et tui amoris in eis ignem accende.
Come, Holy Ghost, fill the hearts of Thy faithful, and kindle in them the fire of Thy love.