Selected quotes of Pope Benedict XVI offered daily for prayer and reflection….

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Feast, Pentecost
 


The Church which is born at Pentecost is not primarily a particular Community - the Church of Jerusalem - but the universal Church, which speaks the languages of all peoples. From her, other communities were to be born in every part of the world, particular Churches which are all and always actualizations of the one and only Church of Christ. The Catholic Church is therefore not a federation of Churches but a single reality: the universal Church has ontological priority. A community which was not catholic in this sense would not even be a Church.

 
Homily
Solemnity of Pentecost
Vatican Basilica
11 May 2008

 
 
 
Feast, Pentecost
 


Let us now hand over our desire to serve the Lord to the Virgin Mary, Mother of God and Servant of the Lord. She prayed in company with the Apostles in the Upper Room, in the days leading up to Pentecost. Together with her, let us pray to Christ her Son: Send forth, O Lord, Your Holy Spirit upon the whole Church, that he may dwell in each of her members and make them heralds of your Gospel!

 
Homily
Cathedral of the Holy Spirit
Istanbul, Turkey
1 December 2006

 
 
 
Feast, Pentecost
 


O Lord, my God,” the Psalmist sings, “when you send forth your spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth” (Ps 104:30). These words evoke the first creation, when the Spirit of God hovered over the deep (cf. Gen 1:2). And they look forward to the new creation, at Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles and established the Church as the first fruits of a redeemed humanity (cf. Jn 20:22-23).

 
Homily
St. Patrick's Cathedral
New York, USA
19 April 2008

 
 
 
Feast, Pentecost
 


“Within a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (1:5).
Mary leads the nascent Church in prayer; she is, as it were in person, the Church at prayer. And thus, along with the great community of the saints and at their centre, she stands even today before God interceding for us, asking her Son to send his Spirit once more upon the Church and to renew the face of the earth.

 
Homily
Altötting, Germany
11 September 2006

 

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