...and once those words were spoken before an oppressed, brutalized, yet still faithful people, in a city square on this Vigil of Pentecost, the crowd spontaneously began to reply with one voice....

"We want God! We want God!"

And in that moment, in that place, the Spirit began to renew the face of the earth... of that earth -- and now, the rest is known to history.

Thirty-two years later, the need for Pentecost to be especially felt might belong to different places (including some other spots notably known and loved by Blessed John Paul II). Still in all, how little times change... how universal that crowd's desire remains... and on another year's birthday of this people, it's worth recalling how much is -- what great things are -- expected of this Church: lay, professed and ordained alike....

Today and always, though, if anything's going to come of the work its own strive to accomplish, even if it's tackled in very different ways and amid drastically diverse circumstances, for each and all of us, it can only ever begin from one and the same place and ever refresh it....

"Send down your Spirit!
Send down your Spirit!
And renew the face of the earth...
Of this earth!
Amen."

A Blessed Pentecost and, indeed, Happy Birthday, church... even for the festivities, though, the work continues.

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