Before Jesus ascended into heaven, He told His disciples if He didn’t depart, He wouldn’t be able to send the Counselor to help us on our way to where He was going (Jn 16:5-15). Two millennia later, are we still looking up at the sky, or do we remember that we have received the Holy Spirit to help us proclaim the Gospel and live our lives accordingly? Let’s make it easier to remember to call on our Comforter and Advocate with these ideas for observing Pentecost on May 19. Bishop-elect Michael Martin says it’s his favorite feast because “we don’t celebrate the Holy Spirit enough!”
Pope Francis recently paved the way for the canonization of Blessed Elena Guerra (1835-1914), an Italian nun and founder of the Oblates of the Holy Spirit. Guerra is known for developing “a very special devotion to the Holy Spirit” after she was confirmed at 8. As an adult, she wrote many letters to Pope Leo XIII exhorting him to emphasize prayer to the Holy Spirit among the faithful: “Pentecost is not over,” she wrote. “In fact, it is continually going on in every time and in every place, because the Holy Spirit desired to give Himself to all men and all who want Him can always receive Him, so we do not have to envy the apostles and the first believers; we only have to dispose ourselves like them to receive Him well, and He will come to us as He did to them.” The pope agreed, and in 1896 Guerra composed the Holy Spirit Chaplet, which you can pray in the days leading up to Pentecost.