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A New Pentecost for America
May 4-10, 2008 Issue |
Posted 4/29/08 at 3:00 PM
May 11 is Pentecost Sunday.
Parish
EPriest.com offers Best Practices from parishes.
St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in the Diocese of Jefferson
City, Mo., offers a way to help parents see the gifts of the Holy Spirit in
children.
“The feedback I got had to do with the ‘power’ of the event
itself,” said Father Christopher Smith. “People — usually the parents — have
wept quietly at the sight of their children being anointed with a prayer of
blessing about their particular gift.”
You need peel-off name tags, red felt-tip pens and a list on
red paper of the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit with simple definitions: wisdom
(learns from experience), understanding (figures new things out), counsel
(explains things), fortitude (stands up for what’s right), knowledge (spots
truth and falsehood), piety (is devoted to God and justice), and fear of the
Lord (is reverent).
Prior to the Mass, the pastor reviews the list with the
congregation and asks parents to identify one gift that each child has shown
the most over the past year, write that gift on a name tag and put it on their
child.
After Mass ends, the pastor blesses fresh oil
(non-sacramental) and blesses the children for their gift. Find details at
ePriest.com.
Family
We have a lot of fun with Pentecost at our house. We have
celebrated it in various ways, but the easiest is to make a birthday cake for
the Church.
We top it with 13 candles: a blue one for Mary plus 12 more
for the apostles. This helps us remember the tongues of flame that came down on
the apostles and Mary (as well as others).
Readings
Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 104:1, 24, 29-31, 34; 1 Corinthians
12:3-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23
Our Take
Pope Benedict gave us a preview of Pentecost at Mass at
Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. The Mass he said there was today’s Mass —
only the Second Reading was different:
“In the exercise of my ministry as the Successor of Peter, I
have come to America to confirm you, my brothers and sisters, in the faith of
the apostles. I have come to proclaim anew, as Peter proclaimed on the day of
Pentecost, that Jesus Christ is Lord and Messiah, risen from the dead, seated
in glory at the right hand of the Father, and established as judge of the
living and the dead. I have come to repeat the Apostle’s urgent call to
conversion and the forgiveness of sins, and to implore from the Lord a new
outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the Church in this country. As we have heard
throughout this Easter season, the Church was born of the Spirit’s gift of
repentance and faith in the risen Lord. In every age she is impelled by the
same Spirit to bring to men and women of every race, language and people the
good news of our reconciliation with God in Christ.
“The readings of today’s Mass invite us to consider the
growth of the Church in America as one chapter in the greater story of the
Church’s expansion following the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. In
those readings we see the inseparable link between the risen Lord, the gift of
the Spirit for the forgiveness of sins, and the mystery of the Church. ... In
every time and place, the Church is called to grow in unity through constant
conversion to Christ, whose saving work is proclaimed by the successors of the
apostles and celebrated in the sacraments. This unity, in turn, gives rise to
an unceasing missionary outreach, as the Spirit spurs believers to proclaim
‘the great works of God’ and to invite all people to enter the community of
those saved by the blood of Christ. ...
“I pray, then, that this significant anniversary in the life
of the Church in the United States, and the presence of the Successor of Peter
in your midst, will be an occasion for all Catholics to reaffirm their unity in
the apostolic faith, to offer their contemporaries a convincing account of the
hope which inspires them, and to be renewed in missionary zeal for the
extension of God’s Kingdom.
“The world needs this witness! Who can deny that the present
moment is a crossroads, not only for the Church in America but also for society
as a whole? It is a time of great promise, as we see the human family in many
ways drawing closer together and becoming ever more interdependent. Yet at the
same time we see clear signs of a disturbing breakdown in the very foundations
of society.”
The Hoopeses are editorial directors of Faith & Family magazine
(faithandfamilymag.com).
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