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Theme:
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The Church Age,
the Millennium, the Kingship of Christ,
anticipation of His Second Coming |
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Color:
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Green |
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Mood:
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gratitude, work,
anticipation |
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Symbols:
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Peter's Key, the
letter "M" for "1,000," Crown
symbolizing Christ's Kingship, any symbol for the Church |
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Length:
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Trinity Sunday
to the day before Advent Sunday |
The Time After Pentecost 1
relates to the time between the Age of the Apostles and the End of the
World -- it relates to now, to the Church guided by the Holy
Ghost, to our sanctification. The focus is on developing virtue, emulating the Saints, works of
mercy, and fulfilling our role as soldiers of Christ, as members of the
Church Militant.
Reading
"The Mystery
of The Time After Pentecost"
from Dom Gueranger's "The Liturgical Year"
That we may
thoroughly understand the meaning and influence of the season of the
liturgical year upon which we have no entered, it is requisits for us
to grasp the entire sequel of mysteries, which holy Church has
celebrated in our presence and company; we have witnessed her services,
and we have shared in them. The celebration of those mysteries was not
an empty pageant, acted for the sake of being looked at. Each one of
them brought with it a special grace, which produced in our souls the
reality signified by the rites of the liturgy. At Christmas Christ was
born within us; at Passiontide He passed on and into us His sufferings
and atonements; at Easter He communicated to us His glorious, His
untrammelled life; in His Ascension He frew us after Him, and this even
to heaven's summit; in a word, as the apostle expresses all this
working, 'Christ was formed in us.' 
But, in order to give solidity and permanence to the image of Christ
formed within us, it was necessary that the Holy Ghost should come,
that so He might increase our light, and enkindle a fire within us that
should never be quenched. This divine Paraclete came down from heaven;
He gave Himself to us; He wishes to take up His abode within us, and
take our life of regeneration entirely into His own Hands. The liturgy
of this Time After Pentecost signifies and expresses this regenerated
life, which is to be spent on the model of Christ's, and under the
direction of His Spirit.
Two objects here offer themselves to our consideration: the Church and
the Christian soul. As to holy Church, the Bride of Christ, filled as
she is with the Paraclete Spirit, Who has poured Himself forth upon
her, and from that time forward is her animating principle, she is
advancing onwards in her militant career, and will do so till the
second coming of her Heavenly Spouse. She has within her the gifts of
truth and holiness. Endowed with infallibility of faith and authority
to govern, she feeds Christ's flock, sometimes enjoying liberty and
peace, sometimes going through persecutions and trials. Her divine
Spouse abides with her, by His grace and the efficacy of His promises,
even to the end of time; she is in possession of all the favors He has
bestowed upon her; and the Holy Ghost dwells with her, and in her, for
ever. All this is expressed by this present portion of the liturgical
year. It is one wherein we shall not meet with any of those great
events which prepared and consummated the divine work; but, on the
other hand, it is a season when holy Church reaps the fruits of the
holiness and doctrine, which those ineffable mysteries have already
produced, and will continue to produce during the course of ages. It is
during this same season that we shall meet with the preparation for,
and in due time, the fulfillment of, those final events which will
transform our mother's militant life on earth into the triumphant one
in heaven. As far, then, as regards holy Church, this is the meaning of
the portion of the cycle we are commencing.
As to the faithful soul, whose life is but a compendium of that of the
Church, her progress, during the period which is opened to her after
the pentecostal feasts, should be in keeping with that of our common
mother. The soul should live and act in imitation of Jesus, who has
united Himself with her by the mysteries she has gone through; she
should be governed by the Holy Spirit, whom she has received. The
sublime episodes peculiar to this second portion of the year will give
her an increase of light and life. She will put unity into these rays,
which, though scattered in various directions, emanate from one common
centre; and, advancing from brightness to brightness, she will aspire
to being consummated in Him whom she now knows so well, and whom death
will enable her to possess as her own. Should it not be the will of
God, however, to take her as yet to Himself, she will begin a fresh
year, and live over again those mysteries which she has already enjoyed
in the early portion of previous liturgical cycles, after which she
will find herself once more in the season that is under the direction
of the Holy Ghost, till at last her God will summon her from this
world, on the day and at the hour which He has appointed from all
eternity.
Between the Church, then, and the soul, during the time intervening
from the descent of the divine Paraclete to the consummation, there is
this difference--that the Church goes through it but once, whereas the
Christian soul repeats it each year. With this exception the analogy is
perfect. It is our duty, therefore, to thank God for thus provind for
our weakness by means of the sacred liturgy, whereby He successively
renews within us those helps which enable us to attain the glorious end
of our creation.
Holy Church has so arranged the order for reading the Books of
Scripture during the present period, as to express the work then
accomplished both in the Church herself and in the Christian soul. For
the interval between Pentecost and the commencement of August, she
gives us the four Books of Kings They see a prophetic epitome of the
Church's history. They describe how the kingdom of Israel was founded
by David, who is the type of Christ victorious over His enemies, and by
Solomon, the king of peace, who builds a temple in honour of Jehovah.
During the centuries comprised in the history given in those books,
there is a perpetual struggle between good and evil. There are great
and saintly kings, such as Asa, Ezechias, and Josias; there are wicked
ones, like Manasses. A schism breaks out in Samaria; infidel nations
league together against the city of God. The holy people, continually
turning a deaf ear to the prophets, give themselves up to the worship
of false gods, and to the vices of the heathen, till at length the
justice of God destroys both temple and city of the faithlesss
Jerusalem; it is an image of the destruction of this world, when faith
shall be so rare, that the Son of Man, at His second coming, shall
scarce find a vestige of it remaining.
During the month of August, we read the Sapiential Books, so called
because they contain the teachings of divine Wisdom. This Wisdom in the
Word of God, who is manifested unto men through the teachings of the
Church, which, because of the assistance of the Holy Ghost permanently
abiding within her, is infallible in the truth.
Supernatural truth produces holiness, which cannot exist, nor produce
fruit, where truth is not. In order to express the union there is
between these two, the Church reads to us, during the month of
September, the books called 'hagiographic'; these are Tobias, Judith,
Esther, and Job, and they show Wisdom in action.
At the end of the world the Church will have to go through combats of
unusual fierceness. To keep us on the watch, she reads to us, during
the month of October, the Books of Machabees; for there we have
described to us the noble-heartedness of those defenders of the Law of
God, for which they gloriously died; it will be the same at the last
days, when power will be 'given to the beast to make war with the
saints, and to overcome them.'
The month of November gives us the reading of the Prophets: the
judments of God impending upon a world which He is compelled to punish
by destruction are there announced to us. First of all, we have the
terrible Ezechiel; then Daniel, who sees empire succeeding empire, till
the end of all time; and finally the Minor Prophets, who for the most
part foretell the divine chastisements, though the latest among them
proclaim, at the same time, the near approach of the Son of God.
Such is the mystery of this portion of the liturgical cycle, which is
called the Time after Pentecost. It includes also the use of green
vestments, for that colour expresses the hope of the bride, who knows
that she has been entrusted by her Spouse to the Holy Ghost, and that
He will lead her safe to the end of her pilgrimage. St. John says all
this in those few words of his Apocalypse: 'The Spirit and the bride
say, Come!'
Footnotes:
1 Like Time after Epiphany
and Septuagesima, this Season is known as "Ordinary Time" in the new
calendar.
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