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The Time After Pentecost
from our own lives, and by striving for true holiness. Thus we must work for the cleansing and
sanctification of the Church.
Today we pray that God may cleanse and sanctify His Church. We pray that all the members
of the Church will make use of the means placed at their disposal for this purpose. These
means are principally the celebration of Mass, the sacrament of penance, and the practice of
prayer. This prayer we lay on the paten today:
Prayer
Let Thy continual pity cleanse and defend Thy Church, we beseech Thee, O Lord; and because
it cannot continue in safety without Thee, govern it evermore by Thy help. Through Christ our
Lord. Amen.
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
The Mass
Today the joyful theme of Easter recedes into the background. The fall season has come. The
days are shorter, the nights longer; the darkness is increasing in nature as well as in the soul of
the praying Church. By mere chance the Epistles for this Sunday and the following Sundays
present those letters which St. Paul wrote during his captivity in Rome. Also today for the first
time in the Gradual the Lord appears as the one who will come in glory at the end of time, a
thought which is characteristic of the following Sundays after Pentecost.
On the day of our rebirth a wonderful seed was sown in our soul. In the warmth of the Church
year it should grow and mature; it should ripen into a rich, full life of grace for the soul and for
the Church militant. “Be strengthened by His [Christ’s] Spirit with might into the inward man,
that Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts; that being rooted and founded in charity, . . . you
may be filled unto all the fullness of God” (Epistle). But the seed has not grown in many who
received the grace of rebirth and in whom the precious roots of a supernatural life were planted.
Where a fruitful return was expected, there is the prospect of failure. Such a fear burdens the soul
of the Church today, and therefore she cries out in the Introit: “Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I
have cried to Thee all the day. . . . Bow down Thy ear to me, O Lord, and hear me; for I am needy
and poor.” The same fear impels her to cry out to heaven in the Kyrie and again in the Collect:
“Let Thy grace . . . ever go before us and follow us.” Then only can it awaken the supernatural
seed of life and make it develop into a crop rich “in good works.” God “is able to do all things
more abundantly than we desire or understand” (Epistle). He can send new life and make us
grow to spiritual maturity so that when Christ returns we shall be worthy to accompany Him
to the realm of His glory. “Alleluia. Sing ye to the Lord a new canticle because the Lord hath
done wonderful things. Alleluia.”
On a certain Sabbath, Jesus was invited to dine at the home of a respectable Pharisee. A man
afflicted with dropsy approached Him, and the Lord touched him, cured him, and sent him away.
Thus the liturgy would have us understand that today during the Mass the same Lord comes to
us to cure us. It sees us in the person of the sick man. In humility we acknowledge and confess
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