Something Special on this Octave Day of the Ascension

In the traditional Liturgical Calendar, today is the Octave Day of the Ascension. For these eight days, the prayers of the Divine Office refer to the Ascension as "today." That's what Octaves do. They "extend" important feast days and keep them present as "today" for the full 8 calendar days. We should all know and appreciate just how powerful Octaves have been in our history, especially as they have been mostly eviscerated in the newfangled calendar.

So with that, here's something on this Octave Day to help us anticipate Pentecost. It arrives Sunday. Yes, we're going to get to work soon. And it's likely our duties will consume us as they always do. But this is something that we can all just read through, think about, and perhaps spend a few minutes in reflection.

The Holy Spirit is the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. But, as we all know, he typically gets short shrift from us, if we think about Him at all. If that's the case, then it's time we change that.

Note that this short-shrifting of the Holy Spirit is not unique to our modernist times. It's been an issue for many Catholics for centuries. We'll see in these remarks a reference to an encyclical by Pope Leo XIII (not the current guy, the last Leo). While maybe a bit long to be read on this busy work day, it's worth a shot when we have some time. (Maybe on Pentecost Sunday? Maybe before?)

In case, here's something to lift us up out what we'll see if basically our ignorance, something to open our hearts and minds to the Light of our dear Holy Spirit.

“It is God’s plan that, here and in Eternity, our lives be lived with the Holy Ghost. He is our Great Familiar, our Great Lover. For that reason we ought to know all we can about Him. But we, and that means the generality of men, have not bothered much about Him, save with a kind of lip-service, as we toss off the words of the Sign of the Cross, or rattle off the sublime prayer, “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the holy Ghost,” as a kind of postscript to a decade of the Rosary.  

“When St. Paul came to Ephesus, he asked some of the new converts: ‘Have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed?’ and they had to answer him: ‘We have not so much as heard whether there be a Holy Ghost.’…They were not to blame for their ignorance; for up to that moment they had not been taught properly. But today it is different. After two thousand years of Christianity, all men should know better. But, sad to say, there are even today millions who never heard of the Holy Ghost, and what is more, do not want to hear about Him. Anyway, and this is true of many Catholics, if they’ve heard of Him, they do not concern themselves much about improving the acquaintance. As Leo XIII says, in his wonderful Encyclical on the Holy Ghost – Divinum Illud (May 4, 1897): ‘At least there are certainly many who are very deficient in their knowledge of Him. They frequently use His name in their religious practices, but their faith is involved in much darkness.’ I am afraid that means a lot of us. We give our intellectual assent to all the truths of the Faith, but somehow we do not put some of them to work. We are not heretics, thank God, but we tuck away some of our beliefs as if they were treasures too rich to be used in daily life, gold plates too valuable to hold the daily loaf of bread. Perhaps this hands-off attitude is due to a mistaken sense of reverence, or to a lack of education, or to the neglect of trying to understand, so far as we can, the relations of God and the soul. But if we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that it is plain ignorance. We have not tried to understand and we have not listened to the teaching of the Church. We are not heretics, but this is the attitude that fosters heresy, a cock-sure conviction of one’s own ignorant judgment, and the refusal to give ear to the voice of the infallible Church.” (Father Hugh Blunt, 1943)