Year C

June 8, 2025

On this page you will find:

The readings for Mass, the Mass leaflet with the choice of hymns
A sample universal prayer available for download , in PDF and editable Word formats.
A meditation on the Sunday Gospel , a spiritual text and a commentary by Marie-Noëlle Thabut

Pentecost

Solemnity

Jubilee of Ecclesial Movements

Jesus, standing up, cried out:
“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me,
and let him drink,
He who believes in me!
As Scripture says:
From his heart
Rivers of living water will flow there .

John 7:37-38

Readings from the Mass

https://www.aelf.org/2025-06-08/romain/messe

Mass leaflet

Universal Prayer

Suggested chorus

Lectio Divina
Consult this page for a prayerful preparation for the liturgy and then read the meditations below.

Meditation by Pope Francis

Regina Cæli

Saint Peter's Square

Sunday, June 5, 2022

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of Pentecost . We celebrate the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, which took place fifty days after Easter. Jesus had promised this several times. In today's liturgy, the Gospel recounts one of these promises, when Jesus said to the disciples, “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have told you” (John 14:26). This is what the Spirit does: teach and remind us of what Christ said. Let us reflect on these two actions, teaching and reminding, for it is in this way that He brings the Gospel of Jesus into our hearts.

First, the Holy Spirit teaches. In this way, he helps us overcome an obstacle that arises in the experience of faith: that of distance. He helps us overcome the obstacle of distance in the experience of faith. Indeed, doubt can arise that there is a great distance between the Gospel and daily life: Jesus lived two thousand years ago, in other times, in other situations, and therefore the Gospel seems outdated, ill-suited to speak to our time with its demands and problems. This question also arises for us: what can the Gospel say in the internet age, in the era of globalization? How can its message have an impact?

We can say that the Holy Spirit is an expert at bridging distances. He knows how to bridge distances; he teaches us how to overcome them. He is the one who connects the teachings of Jesus to every moment and to every person. With him, the words of Christ are not a memory, no: the words of Christ come alive today by virtue of the power of the Holy Spirit! The Spirit makes them alive for us: through Sacred Scripture, he speaks to us and guides us in the present. The Holy Spirit does not fear the passing centuries; on the contrary, he makes believers attentive to the problems and events of their time. Indeed, when he teaches, the Holy Spirit makes faith relevant: he keeps it ever young. We risk turning faith into a museum piece: that is a risk! He, on the contrary, places it in its time, always relevant, faith in everyday life: that is his work. Because the Holy Spirit is not tied to eras or passing fashions, but brings the relevance of Jesus, risen and alive, to our time.

And how does the Spirit do this? By making us remember. That's the second verb: to remind. What does it mean to remind? To remind means to bring back to the heart, to recall: the Spirit reminds the Gospel of our hearts. The same thing happens as with the apostles: they had listened to Jesus many times, but they had understood him little. The same thing happens to us. But from Pentecost onward, with the Holy Spirit, they remember and understand. They welcome his words as being spoken especially for them and move from an external knowledge, a knowledge of memory, to a living relationship, a convinced, joyful relationship with the Lord. It is the Spirit who does this, who moves us from "hearsay" to personal knowledge of Jesus, who enters the heart. Thus, the Spirit changes our lives: he makes the thoughts of Jesus our own. And he does this by reminding us of his words, by bringing the words of Jesus to our hearts today.

Brothers and sisters, without the Spirit who reminds us of Jesus, faith loses its memory. Often, faith becomes a mere recollection, devoid of memory; on the contrary, memory is alive, and living memory is brought by the Spirit. And we—let us ask ourselves—are we Christians deprived of memory? Perhaps a setback, a difficulty, a crisis is enough to make us forget the love of Jesus and fall into doubt and fear? Beware! Let us be careful not to become Christians deprived of memory. The remedy is to invoke the Holy Spirit. Let us do this often, especially in important moments, before difficult decisions, and in challenging situations. Let us take the Gospel in our hands and invoke the Spirit. We can then say: “Come, Holy Spirit, remind me of Jesus, enlighten my heart.” It is a beautiful prayer: “Come, Holy Spirit, remind me of Jesus, enlighten my heart.” Would you like us to say it together? “Come, Holy Spirit, remind me of Jesus, enlighten my heart.” Then, let us open the Gospel and read a short passage, slowly. And the Spirit will make it speak to our lives.

May the Virgin Mary, full of the Holy Spirit, kindle in us the desire to pray to Him and to welcome the Word of God.

The Little Way of the Gospel

Interview with Bernadette Dumont

for Magnificat

(I highly recommend subscribing: here )

Come, Holy Spirit! Fill the hearts of your faithful! Kindle in them the fire of your love!

On the day of Pentecost, the Apostles received the Holy Spirit promised by Jesus. And when did we receive it?

Jesus' promise to send us the Holy Spirit was fulfilled for us on the day of our baptism. On that day, to bring the mystery of Easter to its full realization, the Holy Spirit was poured out upon us, making us adopted children of the Father by uniting us to his only Son, Jesus Christ (cf. preface).

◗ Does this mean that Jesus sends us the Holy Spirit to make effective the fulfillment of his last prayer to his Father: "That they may be one as we are one: I in them, and you in me"?

Exactly! Unity is the fruit of communion in love; and the Holy Spirit personifies this communion of love in God. In the Gospel for this Pentecost Sunday, Jesus confirms this vividly by saying that the Father will love us as he loves his own Son, and that then the divine persons will come to dwell among us.

Yes, but it's not automatic: Jesus sets conditions…

There is only one condition: love is all it takes! “If anyone loves me,” said Jesus, “he will keep my word.” His word, his commandment of love that we must keep, is summed up in this formula that he repeated seven times just before: “Love one another as I have loved you.”

◗ To love like Jesus, with our own strength alone, is something we are quite incapable of…

But, precisely, Jesus sends us his Spirit to make us capable of this! It is still necessary that we desire it, that we accept with our whole being to receive this marvelous gift. Throughout the week after Pentecost, at evening prayer, we can repeat the words of the Pentecost Alleluia verse to express our good will: “Come, Holy Spirit! Fill my heart to its very depths! Kindle in me the fire of your love!”

◗ Is it so that we can demonstrate our desire to inscribe our lives in the communion of the Holy Spirit that the Church proposes we receive the sacrament of confirmation?

Indeed. And today, it is important to talk to children about this sacrament, which will allow them to "confirm" their adherence to the gift of the Holy Spirit received at their baptism. Furthermore, their confirmation will enrich them with a special strength to, like the Apostles after Pentecost, live as true witnesses of Christ Jesus and commit themselves to spreading his good news.

Catechist and author of children's books, Bernadette Dumont is a mother and grandmother.

Better understanding the Gospel
with Marie-Noëlle Thabut

Better understanding the Gospel

with Marie-Noëlle Thabut

GOSPEL according to Saint John 14:15-16, 23b-26

WHEN GOD'S LOVE FULS THE HEARTS OF MEN

We know this Gospel well, but it certainly takes on a new light today thanks to the other readings offered to us for the Feast of Pentecost. For example, it is interesting that, for the feast of the gift of the Spirit, the Gospel reading we are given speaks only of love! Often, we are tempted to think of the Holy Spirit in terms of inspiration, ideas, discernment, intelligence of a sort; Jesus tells us here: the Spirit of God is something else entirely, it is Love personified; not surprising, you might say, since, as Saint John says, "God is Love." This means that, on the morning of Pentecost in Jerusalem, when the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit, it was the very love that is in God that filled them. And likewise, we too, baptized and confirmed, our capacity for love is filled with the very love of God. “You send forth your breath, and they are created,” says Psalm 103/104, the feast of the gift of the Spirit. Indeed, created in the image of God, called to resemble him ever more closely, we are constantly being molded by him in his image. Look at the potter shaping his vessel; it becomes more and more refined in the hands of the craftsman. We are that pottery in God’s hands: our likeness to him becomes more and more refined as we allow the Spirit of love to transform us. In the passage from the Letter to the Romans that we read for this feast of Pentecost, the focus is on our relationship with God; it could be summarized by the phrase: we are no longer slaves, we are children of God. In this Gospel passage, Jesus links our relationship with God and our relationship with our brothers and sisters: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments,” and his commandment, which we know well, is: “As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34). We can understand this expression as referring to the washing of feet, that is, a resolute attitude of service. Therefore, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” can be translated as “If you love me, you will serve one another.” Love of God and love of our brothers and sisters are inseparable, so inseparable that the quality of our service to our brothers and sisters is the measure of the quality of our love for God. So we can turn the phrase "If you love me, you will keep my commandments" around: it means "If you don't serve your brothers and sisters, don't claim to love me!" A little further on, Jesus uses a very similar expression but elaborates further: "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him" (verse 23). This obviously doesn't mean that our Father in heaven might not love us if we don't serve our brothers and sisters! In God, there are no bargains, no conditions! On the contrary, the characteristic of mercy is to reach out even more closely to the poor, and we are poor indeed when it comes to loving and serving others.

ALL ARTS ARE LEARNED THROUGH PRACTICE

But what this phrase means is something we know well: the capacity to love is an art, and every art is learned through practice! The Father's love is immeasurable, infinite; it is our capacity to receive this love that is limited and that grows as we practice it. So, we could translate it as: "If someone loves me, they will put themselves at the service of others. And little by little, their heart will expand, and God's love will fill them more and more, and they will be able to serve others even better... and so on to infinity..." To infinity in the truest sense of the word. Finally, let's return to the word "Advocate": it is true that we need an Advocate... but not before God, of course! Saint Paul clearly told us this in his Letter to the Romans (which is our second reading for this feast): “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption as sons” (Romans 8:15). Therefore, we are no longer afraid of God; we do not need an Advocate before him. But then, before whom? Jesus clearly says: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever.” Yes, we need an Advocate, a lawyer to defend us: but it is before ourselves, before our reluctance to serve others, before our timidity, such as, “What are so few loaves and fishes for so many people?” We truly need this Advocate who will constantly plead the cause of others within us. And in doing so, it is actually us he will be defending, because our true happiness is to let ourselves be molded each day by the potter in his image.