In a letter to bishops accompanying his Motu Proprio Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum (2007), Pope Benedict XVI wrote that the Bizarre and Extraordinary Types of the Roman Ceremony “may be mutually enriching.” Over fifteen years since Benedict allowed for a wider use of the 1962 Missal of John XXIII, the Church has gained a larger appreciation of how this “twofold use of 1 and the identical ceremony” can result in such mutual enrichment.
As paradoxical as it could appear, I suggest that the best contribution the 1962 Missal of John XXIII gives the Roman Ceremony is that it makes it extra charismatic. In brief, whereas the “newer” Missal confines the Solemnity of Pentecost to a single day, the “older” Missal prolongs the celebration for a complete week. Simply as we’ve an octave of Christmas and Easter, so we’ve—or ought to have—an octave of Pentecost. The older Missal may help the Church rediscover the ability of the Holy Spirit by a extra strong and prolonged liturgical celebration of Pentecost.
Gregory DiPippo gives a beautiful abstract of the historical past of the Pentecost Octave and argues that “the most effective attainable examples of the mutual enrichment of the 2 varieties which the Holy Father spoke of in Summorum Pontificum could be restoration to the post-Conciliar liturgy of at the very least among the main options which have been eradicated from the Correct of the Seasons,” the “most distinguished” of which is the “Octave of Pentecost.” Although most working towards Catholics attend Mass solely on Sunday, consider the message an eight-day celebration of the Holy Spirit would ship to the Church and to the world!
In a wealthy and probing Encyclical Letter, Saint John Paul II contextualizes the Holy Spirit inside man’s internal battle between sin and sanctity. “Opposition to God,” he writes, “to a sure diploma originates in the actual fact of the unconventional distinction of the world from God, that’s to say on the planet’s ‘visibility’ and ‘materiality’ in distinction to him who’s ‘invisible’ and ‘absolute Spirit’; from the world’s important and inevitable imperfection in distinction to him, the proper being” (Dominum et Vivificantem, 55). This opposition performs out on an moral aircraft since, as Saint Paul writes, “the needs of the flesh are towards the Spirit and the needs of the Spirit are towards the flesh” (Gal. 5:17). John Paul reminds us that it’s the Holy Spirit’s mission to “persuade the world” of sin (Jn. 16:8). Saint Paul offers an in depth record contrasting the “works of the flesh” (enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, “celebration spirit,” envy) with the “fruit of the Spirit” (love, pleasure, peace, persistence, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control) (cf. Gal. 5:16ff). These two lists give the “everlasting tendencies” or “virtues and vices” which can be “the fruit of submission to (within the first case) or of resistance to (within the second case) the saving motion of the Holy Spirit.” Pope John Paul emphasizes the inevitability of that wrestle on this world. We don’t search it. Somewhat, it’s inherent to our situation and to a fallen world. Saint Paul’s phrases “allow us to know and really feel vividly the energy of the strain and wrestle occurring in man between openness to the motion of the Holy Spirit and resistance and opposition to him, to his saving reward” (Dominum et Vivificantem, 55). “Who will win?” he asks. “The one who welcomes the reward” (Ibid).
If the octave of Pentecost have been re-incorporated into the Novus Ordo, we’d have ample room to welcome this reward. Liturgically, it will place the welcoming of the Holy Spirit on the identical degree because the welcoming of the Christ Baby at Christmas and the welcoming of the Risen Lord at Easter. It’s no coincidence that, simply as we quick in preparation for Christmas and Easter, so the Church ought to quick in preparation for Pentecost. Matthew Plese explains the centrality of this fasting to the normal Pentecost Vigil. Nothing might remind us extra of the wrestle between the “flesh” and the “spirit” indicated by Saint Paul and defined by Saint John Paul than a brief denial of our bodily must obtain God’s religious pledge of eternal life.
But John Paul additionally presents a caveat. We don’t interact on this battle in isolation or merely for sake of our particular person souls. The wrestle happening within the human coronary heart “finds in each interval of historical past and particularly within the trendy period its exterior dimension, which takes concrete kind because the content material of tradition and civilization, as a philosophical system, an ideology, a program for motion and for the shaping of human conduct” (Dominum et Vivificantem, 56), the clearest expression of which is “materialism,” the intense systematization of which, in flip, is Marxism (Ibid). Thus, the world—not to mention the Church—is in want of an extended celebration of Pentecost. Sooner or later will not be sufficient. It stays to be seen if the “older” Missal will affect the “newer” sufficient to revive the Octave of Pentecost.
Curiously, one step on this path might have been Pope Francis’ introduction of the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mom of the Church, on the Monday after Easter. The decree instituting the Memorial teaches that Mary, “as a caring information to the rising Church…had already begun her mission within the Higher Room, praying with the Apostles whereas awaiting the approaching of the Holy Spirit” (cf. Acts 1:14). The Catechism conjoins the mission of the Holy Spirit and that of God the Son exactly by Mary: “The Holy Spirit, ‘the Lord, the giver of Life,’ is shipped to sanctify the womb of the Virgin Mary and divinely fecundate it, inflicting her to conceive the everlasting Son of the Father in a humanity drawn from her personal” (CCC 485). Thus, Mary is “the masterwork of the mission of the Son and the Spirit within the fullness of time” (CCC 721). It’s by Mary that “the Holy Spirit begins to carry males, the objects of God’s merciful love, into communion with Christ” (CCC 725). Therefore, relatively than impeding the reinstitution of a Pentecost Octave, the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mom of the Church, might properly improve it, or, on the very least, the latter could possibly be transposed to the Monday after the Octave.
It stays to be seen if and the way the post-Vatican II Missal will evolve within the wake of Summorum Pontificum, however it’s onerous to think about motive not to reintroduce the Octave of Pentecost. Extending the celebration of Pentecost for every week would rightly remind us of our private sins and the sinful methods of the world. However most of all, it will rekindle in us the “needs of the spirit,” the “exhortations echoing within the evening of a brand new time of creation, on the finish of which, like two thousand years in the past, ‘each man will see the salvation of God’” (Dominum et Vivificantem, 56. Cf. Lk. 3:6 and Is. 40:5).
Picture by John Canada on Unsplash