I have previously written about the brilliant spiritual classic “Divine Intimacy” by Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, available from Baronius Press.  Below is an excerpt from his beautiful Meditation for Pentecost Sunday:

“Pentecost is the plenitude of God’s gift to men.  On Christmas Day, God gives us His only-begotten Son, Christ Jesus, the Mediator, the Bridge connecting humanity and divinity.  During Holy Week, Jesus, by His Passion, gives Himself entirely for us, even to death on the Cross.  He bathes us, purifying and sanctifying us in His Blood.  At Easter, Christ  rises, and His Resurrection, as well as His Ascension, is the pledge of our own glorification.  He goes before us to His Father’s house to prepare a place for us, for in Him and with Him, we have become part of the divine Family; we have become children of God, destined for eternal beatitude.  But the gift of God to men does not end there; having ascended into heaven, Jesus, in union with the Father, sends us His Spirit, the Holy Spirit.  The Father and the Holy Spirit loved us to the point of giving us the Word in the Incarnation; the Father and the Word so loved us as to give us the Holy Spirit. Thus the three Persons of the Trinity give Themselves to man, stooping to this poor nothing to redeem him from sin, to sanctify him, to bring him into Their own intimacy…”

“By His descent upon the Apostles under the form of tongues of fire, the Holy Spirit shows us how He, the Spirit of love, is given to us in order to transform us by His charity, and having transformed us, to lead us back to God.”

(Divine Intimacy, Baronius Press, 2008)