9781644135945

The Time After Pentecost
This is a day for renewing our consecration to God. We should renounce the world with
our whole heart, and break away effectually from all that can be displeasing to Him. As on
the day of our baptism, we should repeat, “I believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the
Holy Ghost.” This belief implies more than the admission that the Father and the Son and the
Holy Ghost exist and constitute one God in three Persons. It implies that I live for the Father
and the Son and the Holy Ghost, by whom I have been sanctified, and to whom I have been
consecrated by my baptism. This consecration we renew again today, and we should ratify it
daily and make it more effective through the devout participation in the Mass. When we say
the preliminary prayers at the foot of the altar, we rid ourselves of all attachment to the world,
reject all infidelity, and renounce all that is alien to our state as creatures consecrated to God.
At the Offertory we lay our hearts at the side of the bread and wine that we may make a new
consecration and dedication of ourselves to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost.
During the Consecration of the Mass, the sacrificial fire of our Lord and Savior will descend
from heaven upon our offering, enkindling it with the fire of His love, and He will bear it up
to heaven. We, too, are consecrated and offered up to the Father. We live, now no longer for
ourselves, but for God alone.
This dedication of ourselves to God is strengthened and sealed by the Lord at the time
of Holy Communion. This earthly consecration extends through Holy Communion to the
eternal communio in heaven, where we shall enjoy the companionship of God the Father, and
of God the Son, and of God the Holy Ghost. Then we shall see Him just as He is, face to face.
For all eternity we shall share His life, His glory, His divine knowledge, and the mansions of
His eternal love. This glorious reward the Son of God earned for us while on earth, by His life,
His suffering, and His death. “We bless the God of heaven, and before all living we will praise
him; because He hath shown His mercy to us” (Communion).
Prayer
Almighty and everlasting God, who hast given Thy servants, in their confession of the true
faith, to bear witness to the glory of the eternal Trinity, and to adore the unity in the might of its
majesty: we beseech Thee that by our steadfastness in that same faith we may be ever defended
from all adversity. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Monday
The spirit of Pentecost, the spirit of Christ, is a spirit of love for God and for one’s neighbor. The
new life which has been given us through the redemption is protected by this spirit of charity.
Therefore we are admonished in the Mass for the first Sunday after Pentecost to love one another.
“God is charity.” “He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is charity. By this hath the
charity of God appeared towards us, because God hath sent His only-begotten Son into the
world that we may live by Him. In this is charity; not as though we had loved God, but because
He hath first loved us and sent His Son to be propitiation for our sins. . . . And we have known
and have believed the charity which God hath to us. God is charity; and he that abideth in
charity abideth in God and God in him. In this is the charity of God perfected with us, that we
may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, we also are in this world” (1 Jn
411