Wednesday 19 May 2021
Wednesday of the 7th week of Eastertide
Spiritual Reading
Your Second Reading from the Office of Readings:
Wednesday of the 7th week of Eastertide
From "Lumen gentium", the Second Vatican Council's dogmatic constitution on the Church
The mission of the Holy Spirit in the church
When the Son completed the work with which the Father had entrusted him on earth, the Holy Spirit was sent on the day of Pentecost to sanctify the Church unceasingly, and thus enable believers to have access to the Father through Christ in the one Spirit. He is the Spirit of life, the fountain of water welling up to give eternal life. Through him the Father gives life to men, dead because of sin, until he raises up their mortal bodies in Christ.
The Spirit dwells in the Church and in the hearts of the faithful as in a temple. He prays in them and bears witness in them to their adoption as sons. He leads the Church into all truth and gives it unity in communion and in service. He endows it with different hierarchical and charismatic gifts, directs it by their means, and enriches it with his fruits.
By the power of the Gospel he enables the Church to grow young, perpetually renews it, and leads it to complete union with its Bridegroom. For the Spirit and the Bride say to the Lord Jesus: “Come!”
In this way the Church reveals itself as a people whose unity has its source in the unity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The whole company of the faithful, who have an anointing by the Holy Spirit, cannot err in faith. They manifest this distinctive characteristic of theirs in the supernatural instinct of faith (‘sensus fidei’) of the whole people when, from the bishops to the most ordinary lay person among the faithful, they display a universal agreement on matters of faith and morals.
This instinct of faith is awakened and kept in being by the Spirit of truth. Through it the people of God hold indefectibly to the faith once delivered to the saints, penetrate it more deeply by means of right judgement, and apply it more perfectly in their lives. They do all this under the guidance of the sacred teaching office: by faithful obedience to it they receive, not the word of men but in truth the word of God.
Moreover, the Holy Spirit not only sanctifies and guides God’s people by the sacraments and the ministries, and enriches it with virtues, he also distributes special graces among the faithful of every state of life, assigning his gifts to each as he chooses. By means of these special gifts he equips them and makes them eager for various activities and responsibilities that benefit the Church in its renewal or its increase, in accordance with the text: To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for a good purpose.
These charisms, the simpler and more widespread as well as the most outstanding, should be accepted with a sense of gratitude and consolation, since in a very special way they answer and serve the needs of the Church.
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In other parts of the world and other calendars:
Saint Dunstan, Bishop
Monastic Chapel 1920, Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York. Photograph: Randy OHC, 9 July 2007.
From an article entitled "English Hagiology" by Edmund Bishop
"His homeland was in heaven"
The institution of the religious cult of St Dunstan immediately after his death, its almost universal diffusion throughout the country among his contemporaries, is a fact of the highest significance. It was neither the statesman, the prelate, the monk, the patriot – though he was all these – who was thus honoured and venerated, but the man in whom those who had conversed and acted with him, seen and known him, had recognized the features of unworldliness, humbleness of heart, and love of God, which in their minds were associated with the idea of a saint. This note is distinctly perceptible in the account given by his anonymous biographer – the more so when we compare it with the busy benevolence, and the exterior religious preoccupations set forth in the life of St Ethelwold. Thrown more than any other in the midst of the world and its cares, Dunstan walked in a sense alone; he felt the responsibilities imposed on him both by his position and his commanding character which necessarily made him a leader: others might rely upon him, he could lean on God alone. Recollection in God became thus the constant habit of his mind, so that when seemingly immersed in the tumult of secular affairs he could without break or effort pass on at once and enter face to face into the Divine Presence.
Copyright © 1996-2021 Universalis Publishing Limited: see www.universalis.com. Scripture readings from the Jerusalem Bible are published and copyright © 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman & Todd, Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc, and used by permission of the publishers. Text of the Psalms: Copyright © 1963, The Grail (England). Used with permission of A.P. Watt Ltd. All rights reserved.