John XXIII announced that the Council would be a new Pentecost for the Church. However, the calendar that emerged from the liturgical reform eliminated the octave that the Roman rite dedicated to the Holy Spirit. The paradox returns to the debate after Jesuit Thomas Reese claimed that before the Council “we practically ignored the Spirit.”
A “new Pentecost”
On December 8, 1962, at the closing of the first session of Vatican II, John XXIII expressed his hope that the Council would be “truly the ‘New Pentecost,’” capable of making the Church’s “inner richness” flourish and extending it to all fields of human activity. The idea of a new Pentecost accompanied the presentation of the Council and the liturgical reform that followed for decades.
The calendar that emerged from that reform, however, reduced the liturgical space dedicated to the Holy Spirit. With the new Roman calendar of 1969, the week after Pentecost ceased to be an octave. In the 1962 Missal those days remain in red, dedicated to the mystery of the Paraclete. In the current calendar, by contrast, the following Monday returns to Ordinary Time. This is recalled by the magazine One Peter Five in its series on the lost feasts of the pre-1955 Missal.
The last in a long list
Pentecost’s was the last in a series of suppressions. According to that analysis, before 1955 the Roman calendar distinguished between privileged, common, and simple octaves. Easter and Pentecost occupied the first rank, so high that no other feast could be celebrated during them. They were followed by Epiphany and Corpus Christi, and in third place, Christmas, the Ascension, and the Sacred Heart.
The decree Cum nostra hac aetate, promulgated in 1955 under Pius XII, retained only the octaves of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, and suppressed all others from both the universal and particular calendars. Thus disappeared the octaves of Epiphany, the Ascension, Corpus Christi, the Sacred Heart, the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, St. John the Baptist, Sts. Peter and Paul, and All Saints. The post-conciliar reform took the final step and left only Christmas and Easter.
One Peter Five stresses that the loss of the Ascension octave had already weakened the liturgical bridge toward Pentecost, which shaped the apostles’ waiting in the Upper Room. With the subsequent suppression, Pentecost was reduced to a single day, despite the fact that it formerly enjoyed a dignity comparable to that of Easter. In the publication’s view, this leaves the impression that the coming of the Holy Spirit “is celebrated and then forgotten.”
“Just open the missal”
The issue resurfaced following a column by Thomas Reese, SJ, published in September by Religion News Service and reproduced by National Catholic Reporter under the title Why I hate the old Latin Mass: A confession. Describing how his understanding of the Eucharist changed after the Council, the Jesuit writes: “In the past we practically ignored the Spirit.”
Marcos Vera, of the Tekton channel, responded in a video that this is the easiest claim to refute, “because you only have to open the missal.” He recalls that in the offertory of the ancient rite the priest blesses the offerings with the Veni, Sanctificator, a direct invocation of the Holy Spirit upon the altar. That prayer does not appear in the offertory of the Missal of Paul VI. Vera adds that the Gloria concludes cum Sancto Spiritu and that the Creed confesses the Spirit as “Lord and giver of life.” His final argument is the octave: eight days of liturgy dedicated to the Holy Spirit, with its sequence Veni, Sancte Spiritus, suppressed in the 1969 reform.
“Father Reese accuses the ancient rite of ignoring the Holy Spirit, and it turns out that it is the rite he defends that eliminated the eight days the Church dedicated to the Holy Spirit,” Vera concludes. Wherever it is celebrated according to the 1962 Missal, the octave of Pentecost continues to be observed.