Pentecost Sunday

Today is the birthday of the Church -when the Holy Spirit, the Gift of God, came down upon the Apostles and disciples and made all things new. Everything has a significance - the number of Apostles - that they had elected Matthias to take the place of Judas before this event, and the 120 disciples - to show that something new is taking place. And of course, the presence of Our Lady is essential to our grasping of this. As Pope John Paul II pointed out in his catechises series on Our Lady - the term itself - the Mother of Jesus - shows us that "something of the presence of the Son who had ascended into heaven has remained in the presence of the mother." She is now exercising a new motherhood and the first effect of this motherhood is that they are all of one accord and united in prayer. John Paul points this out as essential for our own life in the Church. Remaining with His Mother will enable us always to be of one accord with His Vicar on earth.

At Lourdes Our Lady said, "I am the Immaculate Conception." The good Cure was astounded. How could a human person say such a thing. It was this that intrigued St. Maximilian Kolbe so much that he spent the rest of his life trying to penetrate this mystery. He could see clearly that Our Lady could say this only because she was the Spouse of the Holy Spirit. But it's meaning is so deep that it can never be exhausted. Since then theologians have realized that the Immaculate Conception is more than just a privilege given to Our Lady; it defines her whole person and her relationship to the Trinity.

Just a few hours before the Gestapo came to arrest St. Maximilian Kolbe, he penned his last and most penetrating look into this mystery.

"And who is the Holy Spirit? The flowering of the love of the Father and the Son. If the fruit of created love is created conception, then the fruit of divine Love, that prototype of all created love, is necessarily a divine 'conception.' The Holy Spirit is, therefore, the 'uncreated, eternal conception,' the prototype of all the conceptions that multiply life throughout the whole universe.

"The Father begets; the Son is begotten; the Spirit is the 'conception' that springs from Their love; there we have the intimate life of the Three Persons by which They can be distinguished one from another. but they are united in the oneness of Their nature, of Their divine existence. The Spirit is, then, this thrice holy 'conception,' this infinitely holy 'immaculate conception.' "

"The Mother of God is a creature. It follows that all she is, all she has from God, But she is God's most perfect creature...So perfect is she, so closely bound to the Holy Spirit, that we can call her His Spouse. Therefore she accomplishes in all things the will of the Holy Spirit, Who dwells in her from the first instant of her conception."

Our Lady, Spouse of the Holy Spirit, teach us how to be docile to His inspirations at each moment in our lives!

Today's Marian Feast comes from the Byzantine Church and celebrates the earliest known consecration of a city or place to Our Lady. According to Byzantine history, in 330 AD Emperor Constantine had fully established Constantinople as his new capital city (Roman Empire). On May 11th the Patriarch of the city in the presence of the Emperor consecrated it to Our Lady. This consecration was renewed several times after that and Our Lady work several miracles of delivering the city from various invaders, the last one being in 626 from the Persians.

Why do people consecrate themselves to Our Lady? Consecration - consecrare - means to make holy. In Baptism, we are anointed or consecrated to God; that is, we are made holy, children of God. It requires of us that we become like Jesus Christ Himself. Confirmation perfects this consecration to God. But just as Christ was first made incarnate of the Holy Spirit through the cooperation of the Virgin Mary, so likewise we cannot be conformed into Christ without Mary's maternal cooperation. So it follows that baptismal consecration is also Marian. Mary is already our mother and the one who helps form Christ in us. By making an explicit act of consecration to her, however, we open ourselves up more fully to her action and the action of the Holy Spirit in us.

As Pope John Paul II explained it at Fatima in 1982 when he first consecrated the world to Mary: " Consecrating ourselves to Mary means helping her to offer ourselves and mankind to Him Who is Holy, infinitely holy...The world and man were consecrated through the power of the redemption. They were offered and confided to Love Himself, to Merciful Love. The Mother of the Redeemer calls us, asks us and aids us to join in this consecration, in entrustment of the world. Then, indeed, do we find ourselves as near as possible to the Heart of Christ pierced upon the Cross."