The Family Foundation School Catholic Community Bulletin
Pauca Verba (a few words)
Pentecost: The Gift of the Holy Spirit
Read the account in the Acts of the Apostles.
Pentecost if the Third Glorious Mystery of the Rosary.
It is the feast of Pentecost: the ancient Jewish feast of harvest. But now in Christ, we receive the gift of Jesus’ own spirit, making us a fruitful harvest in the love of God and neighbor, fruitful in faith, fruitful in God’s truth, mercy, healing-reconciliation, and that justice and generosity which renews the face of the earth!
Pray that you and I would receive our own fiery and windy gifts of the Holy Spirit: that our hearts would be warmed to love, that what is old in us would be burned away, that our darkness would yield to Christ’s light. Some people leach light out of a room. “I want to walk as a child of the light,” the hymn says and bring light and bestow light wherever I go.
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Our friend, Father John Zharsky joins us this afternoon at 4:00 P.M. to lead us in an Akathist to The Mother of God, as Mary’s Month of May draws to its close. We remember that in venerating an icon, there is a bow before the holy image of the Mother of God, we make the sign of the cross carefully and kiss the icon with love and humility. An Akathist is sung. The word means: standing. Bring a friend! Father Zharsky will undoubtedly speak to us about prayer and the Christian life – come and see!
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Daughter of Your Son
St. Bernard has been called the harp of Mary, because when he speaks about the glories of Our Lady his words constitute a true music. The Marian devotion of St. Bernard, the Abbot of Clairvaux, was so proverbial during the Middle Ages that Dante in the Divine Comedy chose him as his guide in paradise toward the throne of Mary. Once he has reached the throne, Bernard intones a hymn in honor of the Blessed Virgin that resounds with the echo of the sermons he preached on earth. Listen!
O Virgin Mother, daughter of your Son, humble and exalted beyond every creature, and established term of God’s eternal plan, you are the one who ennobled human nature to such an extent that its Divine Maker did not disdain to become its workmanship…
O Lady, you are so great and powerful that those who seek grace without recourse to you are expecting wishes to fly without wings.
Your loving kindness not only comes to the aid of those who ask for it but very often spontaneously precedes the request for it.
In you is mercy, in you is pity, in you is magnificence, in you is found everything that is good in God’s creation.
Dante (Paradise, XXXIII)
A Few Words