Pentecost Sunday 2016

Pentecost Sunday 2016

When they entered the city they went to the upper room where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these devoted themselves with one accord to prayer, together with some women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers. Acts 1:13,14

When Pentecost falls in the middle of May, the month of Mary, it is a beautiful symbol of the disciples of Jesus, with Mary at their centre, awaiting in prayer the promised gift of the Spirit, who had already come upon Mary at the moment when she became the mother of Christ. Now, she receives the Spirit as mother of the newborn Church. The infant Church of the first century, there in Jerusalem, needed the intimate presence of Mary. She is not less present to the Church of the twenty-first century, spread across the world, still telling the Good News of her Son amid the challenges and needs of our time. It is with the support of her prayer and the encouragement of her mothering that we open our hearts to the outpouring of the Spirit this Pentecost.