Pentecost, fifty days after Easter, celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit, promised by Jesus, and poured out on the apostles. For us Christians, it is the incredible discovery of a new force, that of the Spirit of God, given in superabundance at baptism. The Spirit strengthens, consoles, inspires, vivifies! He comforts us in a living and joyful faith. He is the best spiritual guide. Let us savor these extracts from the sermons given by Saint Francis de Sales for the feasts of Pentecost:
“Now, after the Holy Spirit has given us the gift of understanding, there follows the gift of wisdom, which fills the soul with all good. Many scholars are mad (Rm, I, 22), but wisdom is a science by which one savors, tastes and penetrates the goodness of the law and the highest things of the Gospel, not to speak or preach about them, but to practice them, and, like the bee, the soul goes to the flowers of the law, sucking the honey of the goodness of God. How sweet is your promise to my palate: honey has less flavor in my mouth when I savor it in the mouth of my heart, when you give me a taste of your divine maxims against those of the world. O how happy is the soul which has reached this degree, for it is a mark that it is filled with the Holy Spirit and that He has communicated to it His gifts.
The sick do not savor meats because of the catarrh which occupies the parts intended for taste; the spiritually sick want good in the opposite direction: they have neither fear, nor strength, nor piety, nor knowledge. Whoever wants to receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit must purge themselves of sinful moods. We have the tongue, that is to say the soul, laden with catarrh; we must leave the gifts of the world to receive those of the Holy Spirit. The spirit of the world has its gifts: it has the knowledge to achieve honors, greatness and riches; the strength to go into a duel; the fear of becoming poor and losing the paradise of the world and its favors. We must leave these gifts, because they are incompatible with those of the Holy Spirit; then we must abandon our heart, and beg Him to part with us His precious gifts and preserve them in our souls at the risk of all our affections, to give us the gift of fear to bring about our salvation and to remove from our hearts the others fears that the devil suggests to us. Let everything else be lost, provided that we do not lose God. What can the world do? take away two or three days of temporal life? Hey, what should it matter to us, provided we don’t lose eternal life?
Because the Holy Spirit is the love of the Father and the Son, we attribute to him the works which proceed from the goodness of God, such as the justification and sanctification of souls, as well as the works which proceed immediately from all- power, like those of creation, are attributed to the Father; therefore we say: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. » But the works of wisdom are attributed to the Son because he is the Word of the Father, Verbum Patris; this is why the work of redemption is attributed to him, especially since, like a very wise doctor, he knew how to cure human nature of all its ills. The works therefore which proceed from the goodness of God are attributed to the Holy Spirit because he is love, that is to say the loving sigh of the Father and the Son. Now, on this feast, having to consider the works of the Holy Spirit, some regard them as fruits, as they are described by the Apostle Saint Paul: “But this is the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Ga 5, 22-23) Others consider them and share in gifts of knowledge, interpretation and others, as the same Apostle reports in his First Epistle to the Corinthians. But to collect them, I am happy to consider them under the seven gifts spoken of in Isaiah. (Is 11.1)
Today we celebrate the feast of gifts and of the gift of gifts which is the Holy Spirit, who was sent from the Father and the Son to the Apostles, in the form and figure of tongues of fire. But in this gift seven others are enclosed, which we call gifts of the Holy Spirit. Certainly, it was a very great gift that the heavenly Father made to the world when he gave it his own Son, as he himself said, and after him his great Apostle Saint Paul: He did not spare his own Son , but he delivered it for us all: how could he, with him, not give us everything? (Jn 3:16; Rom 8:32) We can consider the greatness of the gift of the Holy Spirit with all its effects, as it is sent by the Eternal Father and by Our Lord to his Church, or as it is sent to each of us in particular . Certainly, we cannot thank God enough for what he has made this singular present
Source: Dimanche de la Pentecôte 2018 – Association Saint François de Sales (saint-francois-de-sales.com)