Pentecost

The Spirit of God breathes upon the world, in order to regenerate His children. If, as in the time of the apostles, it does not show itself under the form of tongues of fire, it is no less present among you. Pray, then, with fervor to the Almighty, that He may deign to make you draw profit from all the moral advantages, from all the imperishable gifts that He saw fit to pour out upon the head of the apostles and of Christ. Ask and you shall receive, and nothing that you ask that is good and useful for your spiritual progress will be refused to you. Pray, then, once more, with fervor; but let it be your heart that speaks, not the lips; or if your lips move, let them say only what the heart has thought. The happiness you will feel when you are animated by the Spirit of God is so great that you can form no idea of it. It depends on you to obtain it. And, from this moment on, consider the days that remain for you to live as a stretch of road to travel in order to reach your destination, where you will find, at the end of the day, your supper and your lodging for the night. But let the small relative importance that you should attach to earthly things not prevent you from considering your material duties as very serious; you would commit a most grave fault in the eyes of God if you did not conscientiously give yourselves to your daily labors. Nothing must be despised of what has come from the hands of the Creator; you must enjoy, in a certain measure, the material goods that He has granted you. Your duty is not to keep them exclusively for yourselves, but to make the brothers to whom they have been refused share in them. A pure conscience, a charity and a humility without limits, here is the best of prayers to draw the Holy Spirit to oneself. It is the true Veni Creator, n not that this, sung in the churches, is not a prayer that will be received, whenever it is made with a good heart; but, as has already been told you countless times, the substance is everything, the form a small thing. Ask, then, by your acts, that the Holy Spirit come to visit you and pour into your soul that strength which faith gives to overcome the miseries of earthly existence and to extend a hand to those brothers of yours whom the weakness of the spirit prevents from seeing the light, without which you can only march blindly, at the risk of injuring yourselves on the obstacles scattered along the way. The true happiness, for which you all sigh, is found there; each one has it within reach: it is enough to will it in order to attain it. Take today good and firm resolutions, and the Spirit of God – be assured – will not fail you. Love your neighbor as yourselves for the love of God, and you will have worthily solemnized the day on which the Holy Spirit came to visit the apostles of Christianity. Hippolyte Fortoul. n [1]

[v. Pentecost.]

[2] [Veni Creator Spiritus (Come Creator Spirit) is a hymn of the Catholic Church sung in honor of the Holy Spirit and composed by Rabanus Maurus, in the 9th century. The hymn is intoned by the cardinals when they enter into the Conclave and in the liturgical ceremonies related to the worship of the Holy Spirit. ]

[3] [v.

Hippolyte Fortoul.]