Sunday, May 28 : Saint Irenaeus of Lyons

When the Lord gave to the disciples power to confer rebirth into the life of God, he said: «Go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit» (Mt 28,19). He promised through his prophets that he would pour out this Spirit in the last times on his servants and handmaidens so that they would prophesy (Jl 3,1)… In the same way our Lord promised «living water» to the Samaritan woman so that she might «never thirst again» or have to drink water drawn up laboriously but might have water «welling up to eternal life» within herself (Jn 4,10-14). It is a matter of being able to drink what our Lord himself received from his Father and gives, in his turn, to those who live in him, by sending out the Holy Spirit over all the earth… Gideon had prophesied that the dew, which is the Spirit of God, would be spread over all the earth (Jg 6,36-40). It was this same Spirit of God that came down on the Lord: “The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and devotion, the Spirit of fear of the Lord” (Is 11,2-3). He gave the same Spirit again to the Church, sending the Counsellor to every nation from heaven,from which the Lord said “the devil was cast down like lightening” (Lk 10,18). Accordingly we need God’s dew, so as not to be burnt up and made unfruitful but rather to have a Counsellor when we have an Accuser (Rv 12,10). For the Lord entrusts to the Holy Spirit his man who had fallen among thieves (Lk 10,30). Taking pity on him, he has bound up his wounds and given two imperial coins, stamped with the image of Spirit and the inscription of the Father and the Son. We are to accept them, and make the coin entrusted to us bear fruit and multiply for the Lord (cf Mt 25,14f.).
maronite readings – rosary,team