Parish News

This Sunday 19th with the celebration of Pentecost the Easter Season draws to a close.  This great Easter feast of Pentecost stands as the second greatest day in our Church year after Easter Sunday itself, outranking by far even Christmas itself. 

Pentecost is often looked at as just a feast day standing by itself.  But it’s not.  It is an Easter  day, intimately bound up with Easter itself.  Pentecost celebrates that what happens at Easter belongs also to us – that the Spirit poured out by the Father on Jesus, raising him to life, is poured out on us.

And the Spirit is the Spirit of unity.  As the Spirit is the bond of love uniting Father and Son in the Trinity, so the Spirit unites us, brings us into one body. For that reason Pentecost is often called ‘the birthday of the Church’ for the Church is born, the Christian community is born, in the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit. For that reason too the week leading up to Pentecost is observed as ‘The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity’.  This is a day which invites us to participate in the great unifying work of the Holy Spirit ‘who builds the body of Christ’.                Fr Colin