May 19--Pentecost

 

El Greco, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Happy Birthday to our dear Mother Church! It was on Pentecost thousands of years ago when the Church was born to continue Jesus’ mission in the world; to help bring about forgiveness and offer salvation to humanity through Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples so they could share the love of God with everyone they met. They were bestowed the gifts of the Holy Spirit so those gifts could enable others to come to God’s love.

Jesus commissioned them to spread the Good News: "Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (Jn. 20: 21). But first he said to wait for the Advocate, the Holy Spirit who would come upon them: “‘When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me. And you also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning’” (Jn. 15:26-27).

So now we have been commissioned and anointed. We have been given the gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. We use them when we are called to testify to our faith. We have been given the fruits of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. We live lives that demonstrate our commitment to Christ and his bride, the Church.

We trust in God to love us, to guide us, and to grace us so that we may be his witnesses and ambassadors to the world:

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful
and kindle in them the fire of your love.

Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created,
and you shall renew the face of the earth. Amen.

May 17--St. Paschal Baylon, Religious

 

Art Credit: Saint Paschal Baylon Adoring the Blessed Sacrament (Detail) by Claude Francois (1615-1685); Metropolitan Museum of Art (Open Access)

The 10th National Eucharistic Congress is scheduled to take place July 17-21 in Indianapolis. One of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage routes is through the Omaha Archdiocese with a Mass at St. Cecilia’s Cathedral June 23. We are in the midst of the three-year National Eucharistic Revival to help Catholics “revive our understanding of and devotion to the Most Holy Eucharist!” It is exactly what our saint of the day, St. Paschal Baylon, would have approved because he is the patron saint of Eucharistic Congresses.

St. Paschal lived in Spain from 1540-1592 during the Golden Age of the Church in Spain. He was a shepherd during his youth and became a Franciscan friar at the age of 24. As such he was a cook, gardener, beggar, and porter. “He is best remembered, however, as a contemplative and a mystic who experienced ecstatic visions during extended periods of prayer before the Holy Eucharist. It was the joy of his life to pray in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.” Pope Leo XIII proclaimed him the patron saint of Eucharistic Congresses, calling him the “seraph of the Eucharist”: “Now, in the glorious ranks of those, the ardor of whose piety towards the great Mystery of the faith was more evident and overflowing, Paschal Baylon holds a most prominent place; for, being gifted with a soul which aspired above all things to Heaven, he embraced a severer mode of life, entering the Order of Minors of the Strict Observance, and from the contemplation of the Holy Eucharist he derived that science and wisdom which placed him, though formerly an unpolished and illiterate man, in a position to solve the most difficult questions of the faith.”

Let us pray before the tabernacle and adore Our Lord Jesus in the Eucharist. St. Paschal Baylon, pray for us!