vault above the choir of St. Cyril, Kiev
Happy Feast of Pentecost! Two members of our folk group made me happy this morning by doing a beautiful job on the Pentecost Sequence.
The Pope's homily is great (Jesus versus Prometheus as giver of Fire to man!) but not yet translated.
For the season I've been reading Arcbishop Martinez' The Sanctifier
; it's not easy to excerpt, but it's a treasure. Here's one little thought, though, fitting for a Pentecost feast that closes out the Mary Month of May:As for Perfection, these profoundly comprehensive words are well known: "It is now no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me." The word "transformation" is also from St. Paul: "But we all, with faces unveiled, reflecting as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into His very image from glory to glory."
Now, how will this mystical reproduction be brought about in souls? In the same way in which Jesus was brought into the world, for God gives a wonderful mark of unity to all His works. Divine acts have a wealth of variety because they are the work of omnipotence; nevertheless, a most perfect unity always shines forth from them because they are the fruit of wisdom; and this divine contrast of unity and variety stamps the works of God with sublime and unutterable beauty.
[snip]
This is what we are taught regarding Jesus, with the conciseness and precision of an article of faith: "who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, ... of the Virgin Mary." That is the way Jesus is always conceived. That is the way He is reproduced in souls. He is always the fruit of heaven and earth. Two artisans must concur in the work that is at once God's masterpiece and humanity's supreme product: the Holy Spirit and the most holy Virgin Mary. ...
Undoubtedly, the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary sanctify us in different ways. The first is the Sanctifier by essence: because He is God, who is infinite sanctity; because He is the personal love that completes, so to speak, the sanctity of God, consummating His life and His unity, and it belongs to Him to communicate to souls the mystery of that sanctity.
The Virgin Mary, for her part, is the co-operator, the indispensable instrument in and by God's design. From Mary's maternal relation to the human body of Chris is derived her relation to His Mystical Body which is being formed through all the centuries until the end of time, when it will be lifted up to the heavens, beautiful, splendid, complete, glorious.
[snip]
The Holy Spirit pours charity into our heart, makes a habitation of our soul, and directs our spiritual life by means of His gifts. The Virgin Mary has the efficacious influence of Mediatrix in the most delicate operations of grace in our souls.
[snip]
Such is the place that the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary have in the order of sanctification. Therefore, Christian piety should put these two artisans of Christ in their true place, making devotion to them something necessary, profound and constant.
