In his homily on Pentecost Sunday in 2009, Pope Benedict XVI said that ‘Pentecost is distinguished from all the Solemnities by its importance since what Jesus Himself had announced as the purpose of the whole of his mission on earth is brought about in it. Indeed, on his way up to Jerusalem he had declared to his disciples: ‘I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!’ (Luke 12, 49)

A most typically Holy Week prayer, known as The Golden Lord’s Prayer, is one of the most beloved meditative prayers of the religious Catholic women of Hungary. In it, Jesus tells his mother, Mary what awaits him on the days of the Holy Week. As far as we know, the origin of the prayer is unclear, but it appears to have been already known by Hungary’s ethnic Germans as early as in the 15th century.