At Work Within the Octave of Pentecost

The Octave of Pentecost remains alive and well in the traditional Liturgical Calendar. It's been dropped from the newfangled "Novus Ordo" one. We discussed this a couple of Sundays ago.

In the face of the newfangled, yet observing the traditional, we'll proceed within the Octave. OK?

So if we attend to our duties within the Octave of Pentecost. it behooves us to be recollected in that spirit as we go about our business. We want to always be recollected, of course. And in our effort to do so, it's good to connect with the Liturgical Calendar, particularly during special seasons (e.g., Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter). While Octaves were suppressed - for the most part - in the Novus Ordo liturgical scheme, if we do follow the Traditional Calendar (a richer and perfectly legitimate experience) we can also direct our hearts and minds to recollect the simple fact that we're working withing the Octave of, in this case, Pentecost.

In the case of Pentecost, this can be especially beneficial. It is, along with Easter, one of the two most important events in the history of our world. Even after the Resurrection, Christ's disciples didn't quite "get it." They were joyful, but confused. And when Our Lord ascended to His Father, a bit sad. Re-read the Acts of the Apostles and find them in that room when the Holy Spirit descends upon them: from confusion to crystal clarity in a fiery moment. Quite incredible. The direct Hand of God laid upon them. All was now clear. 

With that singular and spectacular, the world lay at their feet waiting to hear the Good News. In the face of persecution and for many (most?) of them ultimately martyrdom, they went forth gave the world their all. They now understood that Jesus, the Messiah, was not to be the ruler of a new Israel in a political sense. He was the ruler of a New Israel that included the entire world.

It did take a bit of back and forth amongst the apostles for all this to finally be understood. But as we know, the dramatic conversion of St. Paul and his charge to evangelize the Gentiles managed to persuade the others of this universal Kingdom of Jesus Christ. And - if you know your history - eventually this came to be and remains still.

But without getting too tangled up in that history, and where exactly our world stands these days in the matter of the Kingship of Christ, we can look to our own little kingdoms and consider how we have and will continue to follow Our Lord in these post-Pentecost days in which we live.

Here's some able and quite specific assistance from Archbishop James Leen. If you read it slowly and carefully, you'll know exactly how to follow Christ as was intended from the beginning. And with the Light of the Holy Spirit - available to us all if we take a few moments each day to pray for His guidance - we can turn our ordinary work day into one duly recollected in the spirit of Pentecost. 

“The Christian life consists in actions which reflect the spirit of Christ, nay, more, in actions that incarnate, as it were, the spirit of Christ. Jesus must, by our union with Him, by our elimination of self in favor of Him, be permitted to perpetuate, in some measure, His life, in us. If we are to fulfil the designs of God in our regard, we must allow God to discern some dim outline of the features of His Divine Son in the physiognomy of our soul. It must be the aim of the true Christian to make applicable to himself the words of Saint Paul: ‘I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me.’

    “The great Apostle has invented a completely new vocabulary to crystallize this truth. He speaks of being buried with Christ, of suffering with Christ, of rising with Christ, of being glorified with Christ, and so on. For the Apostle, the Passion, Death, and Resurrection were not events anchored in the sea of time, but events perpetually re-enacted in the Mystical Body. To the extent that the life of the first Adam is destroyed in the member of Christ, that is, to the extent that the life of the flesh and its concupiscences has been subjugated in him, the life of grace derived from Christ has freedom to develop: according as it does, the Christian in his life becomes identified with Christ and re-lives the life of Jesus. The Saints understood things thus. They did not content themselves with admiring the life of the Savior, they aimed at living it themselves. At times God deigns to give outward proofs of the actuality of this mystery as when He traced the marks of the Passion on the body of Saint Francis of Assisi. We must live the mysteries of Christ’s life, in the due order of these mysteries. All this living should subserve in us, and lead up to, the Resurrection.” (Archbishop James Leen, C.S.Sp.)
 

Happy Pentecost!