Our site uses cookies to improve the user experience and we recommend accepting its use to take full advantage of the navigation

Master·evangeli.net

Today's Gospel + short theological explanation

Pentecost Sunday
Download
Gospel text (Jn 20:19-23): On the evening of that first day of the week, (…) Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, «(…) “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit (…).”

God the Holy Spirit

Fr. Antoni CAROL i Hostench (Sant Cugat del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain)

Today, we celebrate the feast of the most mysterious character of the trinity, the Holy Spirit. He is a Divinity, the third Person. Christ at the last supper gave His Body and His Blood to the Apostles. Now, as the risen Lord, He gives them the Holy Spirit, his own Spirit. He gave them this gift fifty days later, on the day of Pentecost.

It is relatively easy for us to imagine Jesus is the son of God made man. Thanks to his sacrifice on the Cross, the Holy Spirit is sent among us. We cannot imagine how He is, because He is not material; but pure spirit, he is really somebody, a person. He dwells among us as the “Shadow of Christ”.

—Holy Spirit, Divine Love: I see the Apostles transformed by receiving you; they were not afraid anymore and began to preach with conviction and wisdom. Transform me also. Come into my heart, to my mind and guide my life so that I may live in the divine will.


The Creator Spirit has a heart! He is Love!

EDITORIAL TEAM evangeli.net (based on texts by Benedict XVI) (Città del Vaticano, Vatican)

Today, let us ask ourselves who is the Holy Spirit? The Church's great Pentecostal hymn “Come, Holy Spirit” gives us a first answer. The world in which we live is the work of the Creator Spirit. Pentecost is not only the origin of the Church; Pentecost is also a feast of creation.

The Holy Spirit comes to meet us through creation and its beauty. However, in the course of history, a thick layer of dirt has covered God's good creation, which makes it difficult to perceive in it the Creator's reflection,

—But the Creator Spirit comes to our aid. He has entered history and speaks to us in a new way. In Jesus Christ we see something totally unexpected: in God, an "I" and a "You" exist: the Son who speaks to the Father exists and they are both one in the Spirit. The mysterious God is not infinite loneliness, He is an event of love. The Creator Spirit has a heart! He is Love!


Pentecost: God also emerged, as it were, from his intimacy and came to meet us

EDITORIAL TEAM evangeli.net (based on texts by Benedict XVI) (Città del Vaticano, Vatican)

Today, we see something totally unexpected: in God, an "I" and a "You" exist. The mysterious God is not infinite loneliness, he is an event of love. If by gazing at creation we think we can glimpse the Creator Spirit, God himself, rather like creative mathematics, like a force that shapes the laws of the world and their order, but then, even, also like beauty, now we come to realize: the Creator Spirit has a heart. He is Love.

The Son who speaks to the Father exists and they are both one in the Spirit, who constitutes, so to speak, the atmosphere of giving and loving which makes them one God. This unity of love which is God, is a unity far more sublime than the unity of a last indivisible particle could be. The Triune God himself is the one and only God.

—Through Jesus let us as it were cast a glance at God in his intimacy. Yet Jesus did not only let us see into God's intimacy; with him, God also emerged, as it were, from his intimacy and came to meet us. This happened especially in his life, passion, death and Resurrection; in his words.