THE END OF EASTERTIDE

Eastertide’s final climax comes today with the Descent of God the Holy Spirit upon Our Lady and the Apostles together with the other disciples and the holy women.  This celebration brings Eastertide to an end. But when we call it an “end”, we don’t really mean that Pentecost is merely the final moment, or conclusion of the Easter sea-son—we mean much more.  After all, Pentecost marks a wholly new beginning—the birth of the Church on earth.  It was from this moment that the Apostles were changed for ever in their understanding of Our Lord—of His person and His mission—and began to share in that mission themselves by their preaching and their celebration of the Sacraments, as we will hear in the First Reading from the Acts of the Apostles.

The Descent of the Holy Spirit therefore began the fulfillment of Our Lord’s promise to the Apostles that “He would not leave them orphans but would come back to them,” (Jn 14:18) and that He “would send them another Comforter, the Spirit of Truth...who would guide them into all truth” (Jn 16:13) and “remind them of all that [Jesus] had taught them” (Jn 14:26).  That descent of God the Holy Spirit continues throughout the ages and wherever the Church has been planted.  It is the Holy Spirit, whom in the Creed we name “the Lord and Giver of Life”, who makes Christ present to us in the Sacraments.  He it is who cleanses us from sin in baptism and confession, who strengthens us in confirmation, who changes bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Our Lord when the words of Jesus are spoken over them in Holy Mass.  And because, as St. Paul teaches us, “we do not know to pray as we ought, the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.” (Rom 8:26) None of this would be possible unless the Lord had left the earth to go to His Father’s side in glory, for as He said to the Apostles: “It is good for you that I go, for if I do not go away the Counselor will not come” (Jn 16:7)

So the “end” of Eastertide is also the beginning of a new era: the era of the Church. Pope St. Leo the Great put it very well when he said that “All that Christ was in His days on earth has now passed over into the Sacraments.” This is the Holy Spirit’s doing.

And, more recently, as Pope John XXIII prayed, "O Holy Spirit, Paraclete, perfect in us the work begun by Jesus."  We continue Jesus' ministry here on Earth.  This is our vocation.  This is our baptismal commitment.