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Pentecost Vigil:
Gn 11:1-9 or Ex 19:3-8a, 16-20b or Ez 37:1-14 or Jl 3:1-5
Rom 8:22-27 Jn 7:37-39 Day:
Acts 2:1-11
1 Cor 12:3b-7, 12-13 or Rom 8:8-17
Jn 20:19-23 or 14:15-16, 23b-26 Fifty days after the Passover, the People of Israel celebrated “Pentecost,” observing the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, when God wrote the law with his own finger on the tablets of stone. The feast was originally rooted in the celebration of the harvest. It was on that Pentecost Day that the apostles reaped the harvest of the Lord’s Passover of suffering, crucifixion, and resurrection, and received the Holy Spirit, who writes the law on our hearts. This same Holy Spirit who came mightily on Pentecost comes to us. The same Spirit is in us by faith – the same Spirit who inspired the apostles, who raises the dead, and who has transformed lives throughout history. That same Spirit is in us, and this should give us tremendous confidence in following Christ. The Holy Spirit, the “Lord and Giver of Life,” brings us back to our truest selves as he illumines us regarding the sanctity of life. The Spirit brings many gifts, and one of them is to enable us to see creation in its proper relationship to God – including the crowning of his creation, the gift of human life. When we do not have this light of the Holy Spirit, the law we have to follow seems like an imposition from the outside that limits our freedom. That’s what people in the world sometimes feel about our attitude toward abortion and euthanasia. They think we are “restricting rights.” But when the Holy Spirit fills us, he gives us an inner attraction to all that is right and good, so that we do not feel pushed where we would rather not go, but rather pulled by the attractiveness of what is good and right. The Holy Spirit is also the Advocate, who pleads our cause. When he fills us, he makes us advocates for all our brothers and sisters in need, including the most vulnerable, the unborn.
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