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The Time After Pentecost
Spirit of God and the more perfect is our prayer. The Spirit of God directs us to community
prayer; He urges us to pray: “Our Father . . . Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our
trespasses . . . Deliver us from evil.” The Spirit of God urges us to pray in the plural form. The
more perfectly we practice this kind of prayer, the more our devotion will assume the spirit of
sonship, the spirit of the Holy Ghost.
Prayer
Grant us, O Lord, we beseech Thee, the spirit to think and do always such things as are right;
that we who cannot exist without Thee, may be able to live according to Thy will. Through
Christ our Lord. Amen.
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
The Mass
The liturgy of this Sunday presents to us a very impressive procession: that of the children of
Israel wandering through the desert. The great and inspiring experience of the departure from
Egypt and the passing through the Red Sea belong to the past. Now the chosen people have
settled down to the monotony and hardship of everyday life in the desert, and this dull life
weighs so heavily on their hearts that their boredom is evident even in their faces. The pilgrims
in the desert yearn for the pleasures of Egypt; many of them dance around a golden calf and
engage in disgraceful idolatry; others commit adultery, while some even grumble against God
and Moses. On account of this infidelity there fell in one day twenty-three thousand who committed
fornication; others perished, bitten by serpents; those who murmured were destroyed
by the destroyer (Epistle). The liturgy also presents another scene. From the height of Mt.
Olivet, Christ looks down upon the city of Jerusalem. Seeing the proud and beautiful city with
its majestic temple, He wept over it saying: “If thou also hadst known, and that in this day, the
things that are to thy peace” (Gospel).
“Now all these things happened to them in figure, and they are written for our correction. . . .
Wherefore he that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall” (Epistle). The things
that happened to Israel in the desert and to Jerusalem might be repeated even in us who are
baptized in Jesus Christ. It is not enough for us to have left, by baptism in Jesus Christ, the Egypt
of a world fallen away from God and to have passed through the Red Sea (to have escaped the
powers of Satan and hell); it is just as important for us to live according to the obligations of
baptism and the principles of our faith by submitting ourselves to the long and arduous wandering
through the desert of this life. It is just as important that we cease to yearn for the pleasures
of Egypt (the world), that we give up the worship of false gods, avoid fornication, and refrain
from murmuring against the Lord.
Was not Israel chosen before all other nations? Did it not have the promises of God, the
patriarchs, divine revelation, the worship of the true God, and the sacrifices? Jerusalem possessed
a splendid temple, newly erected by Herod. There the holy fire burned unceasingly on
the altar, and God Himself dwelt in the holy of holies in the temple. For this reason Jerusalem
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