From his vantage point as universal Shepherd, and gifted with all the graces of his office, Pope Benedict XVI sees what his flock is facing at this point in history. He knows the problems and the pains of the Church better than anyone else. In response to what he sees, he has asked all Catholics to do one thing in particular. He has clearly, repeatedly, and vehemently urged all Catholics to pray for a new Pentecost.
In July of 2007, more than one year before World Youth Day, the Holy Father sent a Message to the Young People of the World. The message is an extended meditation on this passage from Scripture: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). In his closing paragraph of that message, the Pope states clearly what he intended to do at World Youth Day in 2008: “Together we shall invoke the Holy Spirit, confidently asking God for the gift of a new Pentecost for the Church and for humanity in the third millennium.”
In his apostolic journey to the United States, the same theme occured again. In the Mass at Nationals Stadium in Washington, D.C., the Pope intentionally chose to celebrate a votive Mass of the Holy Spirit. In his homily at Nationals Stadium, the Pope gave three reasons for his coming to the United States. First, “I have come to proclaim anew, as Peter proclaimed on the day of Pentecost, that Jesus Christ is Lord…” Second, “I have come to repeat the Apostle’s urgent call to conversion and the forgiveness of sins…” and third, “to implore from the Lord a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the Church in this country.” Later in the same homily, he gently asked: “Today let us pray fervently that the Church in America will be renewed in that same Spirit…” Later still in the same homily, he was more blunt: “And above all, pray that the Holy Spirit will pour out His gifts upon the Church, the gifts that lead to conversion, forgiveness and growth in holiness.”
The day following, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, the Pope celebrated Mass with religious and consecrated persons. In his homily, the same theme continued. He said, “let us implore from God the grace of a new Pentecost for the Church in America. May tongues of fire, combining burning love of God and neighbor with zeal for the spread of Christ’s Kingdom, descend on all present!” Later, he urged those in attendance: “So let us lift our gaze upward! And with great humility and confidence, let us ask the Spirit to enable us each day to grow in the holiness that will make us living stones in the temple which He is even now raising up in the midst of our world.”
A few months later, the Pope went to Sydney for World Youth Day. At the closing Mass, his homily was an extended catechesis on the Holy Spirit. But the Pope did more than talk about the Holy Spirit. He deliberately chose, as though to prove the urgency of his message, to confirm several young people at the same Mass. At the end of his homily, as he was about to begin those confirmations, the Pope said to the crowd of youth: “As we pray for the confirmands, let us ask that the power of the Holy Spirit will revive the grace of our own Confirmation.”
In these words the Pope urged Catholics not only to pray for a new Pentecost, but got quite specific about how to do so. He wants those who are already confirmed to pray specifically for a renewal of their own confirmation. As Catholics we are already in the practice of celebrating the renewal of our baptisms. We do so in the liturgy at the asperges or sprinkling of water (in addition to the use of holy water outside of Mass). The Pope is telling the flock that just as we can and should renew our baptism, so we can and should renew our confirmation. We need only ask the Lord to do it.
There are many more quotes from Pope Benedict XVI urging Catholics to pray for a new Pentecost. Here is a random example (from his Regina Caeli address on the feast of Pentecost 2008): “Let us ask the Virgin Mary to obtain a renewed Pentecost for the Church again today, a Pentecost that will spread in everyone the joy of living and witnessing to the Gospel.” Here the Pope urged us to ask the Blessed Mother for a new Pentecost.
Pope Benedict XVI is not the first pope to urge Catholics to pray for a new Pentecost. The theme appeared long before Vatican II. In 1897 Pope Leo XIII issued an encyclical on the Holy Spirit (Divinum Illud Munus), and urged an increase of devotion to the Holy Spirit. Pope Leo’s vocabulary is slightly different. Instead of speaking of a new Pentecost, he prayed and urged all the faithful to pray that “those divine prodigies may be happily revived by the Holy Ghost, which were foretold in the words of David: ‘Send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created, and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth’ (Ps. ciii., 30).”
This coming October a Synod of Bishops will meet in Rome to reflect upon the theme “The Word of God.” As far as the Pope is concerned, of all the things that the Church needs to be talking about and meditating upon today, that one thing is the Word of God. When we listen to the Pope’s clear, repeated, and vehement urgings to pray for a new Pentecost, and when we notice the choice of topic for the upcoming Synod, we get a clear picture of where the Pope is leading his flock. He is pointing us down the road to a place where together, as a Church, we will encounter the Risen Christ speaking to us today through the Word of God by the light of the Holy Spirit. Could there be anything more thrilling for faith? Could there be anything more explosive with love?
Sometimes it is pointed out that Pope Benedict has a great vision, but no substantial media for communicating his vision to the Church at large. He has nothing like a CNN where all Catholics always tune in. Nonetheless, there are many faithful pastors and priests in the Church. And they have pulpits. Furthermore, there are many religious, catechists, teachers, and parents in the Church. And they each have a circle of influence. If each of these passed along the Pope’s call to pray for a new Pentecost, if each of these invited people to pray for a renewal of their confirmation, undoubtedly a great many people would begin to do it.
And if many people actually did what the Pope is asking of us, if many Catholics really got down on their knees and begged for a new Pentecost, begged that the gifts and charisms received in their own confirmations would be activated and ignited, begged the Virgin Mary to pray for all this, then what would happen?
September 11th, 2008 at 7:43 am
It seems obvious that God is asking something from us, to get off our butts… The late JP2 called for a “new Evangelization” and this pope is calling for a “new Pentecost”
Probably one of the biggest roadblocks of this is fear - fear of standing up for our Faith in public. But again we get a message form the popes, “be not afraid.”
Brian
September 11th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Well,in Italy,the Pope does have a CNN to which all devoted Catholics are tuned in around the clock and have been for years. It’s called Radio Maria. It’s a private Radio that was founded by a priest (Fr. Livio Fanzaga)as a small parish radio station and it just grew and grew as it began to transmit more and more of the Medjugorje spirit and message. It no longer concentrates solely on Medjugorje but it is run on what the Blessed Virgin asks of faithful Catholics in order to transform ourselves, our parishes, the world: it promotes daily Mass, monthly confession, the Rosary every day, fasting on bread and water twice a week, and reading the Bible (as the Madonna has suggested: “a verse or two to meditate each day”–those who go to daily Mass are urged to pay more attention to the readings and meditate on them.). 8 out of 24 hours is dedicated to prayer: the day begins with the morning office and Mass broadcast from a different church/convent/monastery/shrine somewhere in Italy. The Rosary is prayed six times in 24 hours, there’s the Angelus at noon , the Divine Mercy Chaplet, the prayer of the Hours and even evening prayers for children who call in to say a prayer (from the repetoire of traditional bed-time prayers)–and many of the children are 3 and 4 years old!
Then in every 24 hour period there are over 8 hours of catechesis–the instruction is given almost exclusivley by priests, many of whom are professors of pontifical instituions. Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, Cardinal Angelo Comastri, Mons. Girolamo Grillo, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, Cardinal Francis
Arinze are some of the better known names who are very familiar to Radio Maria listeners–and even the Dominicans from the central convent in Bologna have a weekly program on Radio Maria.
The Holy Spirit has found a wonderful instrument in Radio Maria and it is really amazing to see how parishes across Italy have been transformed and are continuing to be transformed. Radio Maria energizeds what amounts to a handful of people in every parish and helps them to persevere in the humble and invisible things like prayer (Rosary) and fasting…something, now that I think of it, that resemble very much the hidden life of Mary!
September 11th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Thanks for this article.
We pray daily “for the intentions of the Holy Father” but thsi piece gives me a more precise focus, both in my prayers and in my daily living.
September 11th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Right you are Catherine, Radio Maria in Poland is a major influence on society there and is despised because it influences elections. We have EWTN in this country also doing missionary work.
The only Catholics who are out of touch with the pope, and there are too many, are the ones watching CNN and the other biased networks who proudly advertise their disdain for the Church.
September 11th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Dear Goral (hello!) I must unfortunately say that Radio Maria in Poland is no longer part of the Radio Maria family. Some years ago it went its own way and it soon got into trouble. It has been warned several times by the Vatican and recently Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz publicly admonished Radio Maria in Poland for causing great disorder within the Church there.
The other part of your comment reminds me of what I think was one of the great accomplishments of John Paul II–and this I think will help me say better what I was aiming at above–he got us to become more focused on ourselves and what we ourselves needed to be doing in order to be totally in harmony with the Church and with God. He seemed to pay little attention to “bad” Catholics while he was busy getting the other Catholics off the couch with his rousing faith. He saw the urgency in the world situation and there was no time to lose over “bad” Catholics. I think he knew that some of them would finally see the light and come along in another moment.
Catholics across the board needed to change in order to meet the great urgency which they did not perceive, and they had to be changed one person at a time. John Paul called us to radical personal conversion, and more than with words he did it by his passion for the Church, his love for the Blessed Virgin and by his faithfulness to Christ. He knew the value of one radically converted person–he knew how much one person can inspire a family, a parish, a neighborhood, a town and so on in a ripple effect moving outwards in the world.
During the Jubilee year in 2000 John Paul brought the statue of our Lady of Fatima to Rome in order to consacrate all humanity to her Immaculate Heart and there in St. Peter’s square he pronounced words that made all the European press jittery for weeks, words which became very relevant 11 months later on Sept. 11, 2001, He said: “Today humanity posseses instruments of unimaginable force (he had spoken also about genetics). Today it is possible for man to make of this world a garden or reduce it to a pile of rubble. Today, more than at any other time in history, man is at a fork in the road.”
How does one achieve the kind of conversion that John Paul II had in mind? The Madonna at Fatima told the children the same thing that the Madonna of Medjugorje tells the seers in her many messages, that in order to save the world, personal conversion is urgent, and in all her apparitions she gives the same recipe: the praying of the Rosary, making sacrifices and acts of penance (fasting, abstinence–and this in order to purify heart , mind and body so that we may indeed receive the Holy Spirit and keep Him) and at Medjugorje she has specifically encouraged becoming more familiar with the Bible, going to monthy confession and attending daily Mass. In a quiet way the Church has been promoting these things in Europe and especially in Italy where the faithful have been made particulary receptive through Radio Maria. Just last Friday, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, as head of the Italian Bishop’s Conference, invited Italian Catholics to fast and pray for the terrible drama of the Christians in India. This is the second or third time in the last 5 years that the Church here has made not only a special call for prayers but also for fasting. So, it really can be said that Radio Maria works hand in glove with the Church. What the Church has found in Radio Maria is a platform that doesn’t have the same weighty (and sometimes problematic) significance of a pulpit.
This takes me back to the subject of the present article: “What the Pope Wants”. I thought it was important to point out that when the Pope travelled to the USA and Australia, he was visiting countries whose culture and Christian population is predominantly Protestant. But the Pope is head of all Christendom–he must speak to all the Christians and not just to the Catholics (it may come as a big surprise to our Protestant brothers and sisters that the Pope is also the Baptist’s Holy Father, and the Lutheran’s Holy Father, he is the Holy Father of the Anglicans and so on). And like a good father, he speaks to all the members and with the aim of re-uniting the family that God has entrusted to him. So it came as no surprise that he kept his speeches free of references to certain teachings-dogmas-traditions which always cause trouble (the Blessed Virgin for instance) and focused on that which unites all of us Christians: the Holy Spirit. But as Catholics, I think we should be careful not to misconstrue what he said; in the Catholic faith, Mary is the intercessor, par excellence, for the Holy Spirit and it is through her and by her intercession that we receive the perfect fullness of the Holy Spirit. And Mary has always indicated the Rosary as the sure prayer which secures Her intercession for us with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Just last Sunday the Pope was in Sardegna in order to honor the celebrations for the Madonna of Bonaria. His homily ended thus,”…let us renew our trust in Mary, recognizing her as “Star of the new Evangelization” and in whose school we learn how to take Christ the Savior to contemporary men and women. May she help you take Christ into families…may she help you find opportune pastoral strategies so that Christ might be discovered by young people…who are thirsty for truth even when they seem to turn their backs on it. May she make you capable of evangelizing in the work place…which is in great need of a new generation of committed lay Christians, able, with competence and moral rigor, to find sustainable solutions for development. In all these aspects of committed Christian involvement you can surely count on the guidance and support of the Holy Virgin. Let us therefore entrust ourselves to her maternal intercession.” This Pope, just like his predecessor, invariably indicates Mary as the way to Christ, as the tireless guide for the Church in these perilous times and as the attentive mother who accompanies the faithful, step by step.
In closing, I found a kind of answer already to Br. James Brent’s closing question: that is, if we were all to get down on our knees and pray the Blessed Virgin, what would happen? Here is what I read yesterday in a pamphlet in church: “There is no personal problem, no community problem, no national or international problem that cannot be resolved by praying the Rosary”. And these words were penned by someone who should know, by Sister Lucy of Fatima!