Pentecost

Dominica Pentecostes

23 & 24 May 2026

The Easter Season concludes today with one of the greatest solemnities of our faith, the Solemnity of Pentecost. As a term, “Pentecost” refers to the “fiftieth day”. There is a Jewish feast of Pentecost, more commonly called Shavuot (or the Feast of Weeks), that falls fifty days after the Jewish Passover. Our Christian observance of Pentecost does not celebrate the same thing as the Jewish Pentecost, but it falls roughly around the same time in the calendar since our Pentecost is the fiftieth day after Easter. Pentecost celebrates the descent of the promised Holy Spirit filling the Church and disciples, both in ancient times and now, with God’s gifts for mission. The practical implication for us is that Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit to dwell within us in order to make us alive as disciples and to give us a responsibility for the mission of sharing the Good News of salvation and a shared responsibility for the Church, especially as lived here at our parish.

Grasping the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, and grasping how one describes the Holy Spirit is rather elusive. When it comes to God the Father, we at least have some personal images that come to mind, even though we would have to admit those are not entirely accurate since the Father is not an old man with a white beard. When it comes to God the Son, we know that by the Son’s incarnation, Jesus is the visible image of God. For this reason, Jesus is referred to as the sacrament of God the Father. That is, Jesus makes God visible just like a sacrament makes God’s grace present and visible or, more properly speaking, perceptible to our senses. But the Holy Spirit? That’s more challenging. The Scriptures and the Church’s Tradition use various symbols to attempt to describe the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is described as water or living water as is employed in the Gospel of the Vigil Mass. He is symbolized by anointing in the Scriptures, most especially with oil. Fire is a symbol that points to the presence of God’s Spirit as when the covenant was formed with Israel on Mt. Sinai or the fire that rested over the apostles and disciples on that first Pentecost. Cloud and light are images that accompany the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures. Breath accompanies the presence of the Holy Spirit as in today’s Gospel whereby Jesus imparts the Holy Spirit to the apostles by breathing on them when he appeared after his Resurrectio