The Blessed Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit



In the following week we will move from May (the month of Mary) to June, the month traditionally dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Yet before we say farewell to May, there are still two more Marian feasts to celebrate. The day after Pentecost we celebrate the newly instituted feast of Mary, Mother of the Church, and on 31^st May is the feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. A brief word about each Marian feast in light of the Pentecost Sunday.

Firstly, the Feast of Mary, Mother of the Church was established by Pope Francis in 2018 who assigned this feast to the day after Pentecost. There is obviously a close connection between the two feasts. Pentecost gives the Church the opportunity to reflect on the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles. Yet how could we forget that Mary was the first to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit as announced by the Archangel Gabriel: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35). It is therefore entirely fitting that Mary should also be there with the apostles at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came upon the Church to flood the hearts, minds and souls of the first Christians. In many paintings of Pentecost, Mary is depicted at the centre of the apostles who are gathered around her. Mary has from the earliest times occupied a central place in the life of the Church. The Decree instituting the new feast notes the patristic underpinnings of this feast: “the former [St Augustine] says that Mary is the mother of the members of Christ, because with charity she cooperated in the rebirth of the faithful into the Church, while the latter [St Leo the Great] says that the birth of the Head is also the birth of the body, thus indicating that Mary is at once Mother of Christ, the Son of God, and mother of the members of his Mystical Body, which is the Church.”

The last day of May is crowned with the feast of the Visitation. The feast is of medieval origin; Pope Urban VI inserted it into the Roman calendar of saints in 1389. In the revised calendar of Pope Paul VI in 1969 the Feast of the Visitation was shifted to 31^st May as a midway point between the Annunciation (25^th March) and the birth of John the Baptist (24^th June) to make it better harmonise with the Gospel of Luke. The scene of the visitation has great familiarity to Catholics as the second of the joyful mysteries of the rosary. We see here in effect two visitations: Mary greeting Elizabeth as they share their mutual joy as expectant mothers, and the hidden prenatal encounter between St John the Baptist and the Christ Child in their mothers’ wombs. Before meeting Jesus at his Baptism in the waters of the Jordan, John first leaps for joy in his mother’s waters! In Luke’s telling Elizabeth “cried out with a loud voice ‘Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus!’” (Luke 1:42).

Coincidentally the theme for the up-coming World Youth Day in Lisbon is taken from Luke’s Gospel: “Mary arose and went in haste” (Luke 1:39) describing Mary’s response to the news from the Archangel Gabriel that Elizabeth is pregnant. Mary is filled with the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit does not admit of delay! There is nothing of spiritual sluggishness or apathy for those filled with the Holy Spirit; those promptings of the Holy Spirit require an immediate response. As we celebrate Pentecost this Sunday we pray that we too may be filled with the Holy Spirit and like Mary hasten to respond to the promptings of Divine grace in reaching out to others.




Wisdom from the Saints: St Irenaeus on Pentecost

“When the Lord told his disciples to go and teach all nations and baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, he conferred on them the power of giving men new life in God.

He had promised through the prophets that in these last days he would pour out his Spirit on his servants and handmaids, and that they would prophesy. So when the Son of God became the Son of Man, the Spirit also descended upon him, becoming accustomed in this way to dwelling with the human race, to living in men and to inhabiting God’s creation. The Spirit accomplished the Father’s will in men who had grown old in sin, and gave them new life in Christ.

Luke says that the Spirit came down on the disciples at Pentecost, after the Lord’s ascension, with power to open the gates of life to all nations and to make known to them the new covenant. So it was that men of every language joined in singing one song of praise to God, and scattered tribes, restored to unity by the Spirit, were offered to the Father as the first-fruits of all the nations.

This was why the Lord had promised to send the Advocate: he was to prepare us as an offering to God. Like dry flour, which cannot become one lump of dough, one loaf of bread, without moisture, we who are many could not become one in Christ Jesus without the water that comes down from heaven. And like parched ground, which yields no harvest unless it receives moisture, we who were once like a waterless tree could never have lived and borne fruit without this abundant rainfall from above. Through the baptism that liberates us from change and decay we have become one in body; through the Spirit we have become one in soul.

The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of God came down upon the Lord, and the Lord in turn gave this Spirit to his Church, sending the Advocate from heaven into all the world into which, according to his own words, the devil too had been cast down like lightning.

If we are not to be scorched and made unfruitful, we need the dew of God. Since we have our accuser, we need an advocate as well. And so the Lord in his pity for man, who had fallen into the hands of brigands, having himself bound up his wounds and left for his care two coins bearing the royal image, entrusted him to the Holy Spirit. Now, through the Spirit, the image and inscription of the Father and the Son have been given to us, and it is our duty to use the coin committed to our charge and make it yield a rich profit for the Lord.

Excerpt from Against the Heresies, St Irenaeus of Lyon (130-202 AD)