Pentecost Sunday.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 27, Issue 21, 27 May 1909, Page 803

Pentecost Sunday.

On this day, in accordance with the promise of Christ, the Holy Ghost, the Third Person of the Adorable Trinity, descended on the Apostles. ' This day,' Butler remarks, 'is the birthday of the Church. Christ had indeed begun to form His Church during His ministry on earth, when He assembled His disciples, selected His Apostles, and placed St. Peter at their head. But by the descent of the Holy Ghost He completed His revelation, and gave to His Apostles a special and extraordinary assistance, by which they were directed and preserved from all error in teaching. He thus, as it were, infused a soul into His mystical body — the Church — and endowed it with a vigorous principle of life and action. From this time its rulers, ministers, and officers, being completely commissioned" and qualified by the miraculous effusion of the Holy Ghost, set themselves to exercise their respective functions in governing and propagating the spiritual kingdom of Christ, which was then perfectly settled and established.'