Eastertide’s final climax comes today with the Descent of God the Holy Spirit upon Our Lady and the Apostles together with the other disciples and the holy women. This celebration brings Eastertide to an end. But when we call it an “end”, we don’t really mean that Pentecost is merely the final moment, or conclusion of the Easter season—we mean much more. After all, Pentecost marks a wholly new beginning—the birth of the Church on earth. It was from this moment that the Apostles were changed for ever in their understanding of Our Lord—of His person and His mission—and began to share in that mission themselves by their preaching and their celebration of the Sacraments, as we will hear in the First Reading from the Acts of the Apostles.

    The Descent of the Holy Spirit therefore began the fulfilment of Our Lord’s promise to the Apostles that “He would not leave them orphans but would come back to them,” (Jn 14:18) and that He “would send them another Comforter, the Spirit of Truth...who would guide them into all truth” (Jn 16:13) and “remind them of all that [Jesus] had taught them” (Jn 14:26). That descent of God the Holy Spirit continues throughout the ages and wherever the Church has been planted. It is the Holy Spirit, whom in the Creed we name “the Lord and Giver of Life”, who makes Christ present to us in the Sacraments. He it is who cleanses us from sin in baptism and confession, who strengthens us in confirmation, who changes bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Our Lord when the words of Jesus are spoken over them in Holy Mass. And because, as St. Paul teaches us, “we do not know to pray as we ought, the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.” (Rom 8:26) None of this would be possible unless the Lord had left the earth to go to His Father’s side in glory, for as He said to the Apostles: “It is good for you that I go, for if I do not go away the Counsellor will not come” (Jn 16:7)

    So the “end” of Eastertide is also the beginning of a new era: the era of the Church. Pope St. Leo the Great put it very well when he said that “All that Christ was in His days on earth has now passed over into the Sacraments.” This is the Holy Spirit’s doing. It is therefore surely a pity that since 1970 Pentecost has become so brief! Being but a single day, as it is in the current calendar, it gives us so little opportunity to dwell in joy and gratitude on the greatness of God’s gift to us of His Holy Spirit. We have all too short a time to ponder the variety and the richness of each of the Holy Spirit’s seven gifts. For that reason we are taking advantage of the Pope’s recent Motu Proprio allowing easier access to the pre-1970 form of the Mass, the now so-called “Extraordinary Form” of the Mass—by offering the chance to prolong the celebration of Pentecost with its ancient Octave. Just as Easter and Christmas are both extended by means of their “octaves” to last an entire week, so too Pentecost used to be celebrated in this way until the Calendar was changed in 1970. Therefore, even though “Ordinary Time” and green vestments will return in the Ordinary Form of Mass on Monday, we will continue the Whitsun or Pentecost Octave through to next Saturday at a special Holy Mass in the Extraordinary From each morning at 8.30 a.m. Again, taking advantage of the Pope’s suggestion in the Motu Proprio, because the scriptural readings at these Masses of the Octave of Pentecost are more varied and numerous than is usual elsewhere in the Old Rite, we will read them once only in English, rather than just in Latin, or in both Latin and English.

    As mentioned above, we name the Holy Spirit “Lord and Giver of Life” in the Creed. This declaration reminds us that the gift of life itself is of God. God created us in His own image and likeness when He breathed the breath (or “spirit”) of life into Adam and Eve, the first parents of the entire human race. This likeness is therefore not of our own making. We are not our own property. We belong to the One who has made us, and has made us especially to resemble Him. We must give an account of ourselves to Him one day. Therefore we hold all human life as sacred. This is why we are called upon to defend it against those who treat human life as “raw material” for grotesque scientific experiments. Please see the Notices about next Wednesday’s lobby of Parliament and if you can please go with Fr. Simon Hall on his trip to Westminster to witness to Life