25 May 2022 - Wednesday of the 6th week of Easter – John 16:12-15

      During our Gospel readings these next two weeks as we journey toward Pentecost and the end of the Easter season, a major theme we hear is the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives of faith to lead us and guide us on our journey.  This upcoming weekend, we will celebrate the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit with us in a special way.   Then, next week, on June 1, we will celebrate the Sacrament of Confirmation with our high school students.  The Spirit will enter the lives of our youth in a very special way during this Sacrament. On May 14, we celebrated the ordination to the priesthood for Andrew Bowden, in which the Holy Spirit will be present in a special way in the Sacrament of Holy Orders.  In our Gospel today, Jesus calls the Holy Spirit the Spirit of truth who will guide us to all truth. 

       With St Irenaeus of Lyons being named Doctor of the Church this year, there are now 37 Doctors of the Church, a very select group of saints who have impacted our Catholic faith and the teachings of our faith in a profound way.  The Doctors of the Church have contributed to our faith in very different ways. Today, we celebrate one of my favorite Doctors of the Church, the Venerable Bede, who was born in the late 7th century.  Bede was an English Benedictine monk from Northumbria, a medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom located in present-day northern England and southeastern Scotland.  As a young child, Bede survived a terrible plague that struck that region, killing the majority of the population.  Even though he spent the majority of his life at his monastery, he was a well-known author, teacher, and scholar.  His work entitled The Ecclesiastical History of the English People has brought him claim as being consider the father of English history.  I remember reading that book in college in a course on Western Civilization. It is considered the principal source of information on Angelo Saxon England.  Pope Leo XIII declared the Venerable Bede a Doctor of the Church in 1899.  Bede is the only native of Great Britain to achieve this designation of Doctor of the Church.  St Anselm of Canterbury is also a Doctor of the Church, but he was born in Italy.  Bede was also a great linguist in Latin and Greek; he translated the works of the Early Church Fathers into the language of the Anglo-Saxons, which contributed greatly to the spread of Christianity in England.  The Venerable Bede is the patron saint of scholars as well as English writers and historians.  We unite our prayers with the prayer of the Venerable Bede today.