Pentecost Sunday

Doctrine: Love and the Holy Spirit. Practical Application: A prayer to the Holy Spirit.

Lectionary 63.

Doctrine: Love and the Holy Spirit

• “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5). (CCC 733)
• The first effect of this love is the forgiveness of sins, restoring “to the baptized the divine likeness lost through sin” (CCC 734).
• The Holy Spirit gives us the gift of divine love, the ability to love as God loves us. This love is the very life of the Blessed Trinity. This ability to love is the “power” proper to Christians. (CCC 735)
• From this power to love grows the fruits of the Holy Spirit as we renounce ourselves and walk in the Spirit: “charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity” (CCC 1832).
• The Holy Spirit teaches us how to pray (CCC 741).

Practical Application: A Prayer to the Holy Spirit

• Something concrete, which is always useful, is to memorize, understand, and pray with faith a verbal prayer to the Holy Spirit such as this one:

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth.

O, God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations, Through Christ Our Lord, Amen.

•  This prayer calls to mind the fundamental things the Holy Spirit gives us:
  • Divine love
  • Renewal
  • Wisdom
  • Consolation

• We can recite this prayer upon rising in the morning, at the beginning of a time of prayer or spiritual reading, and before Mass.
• Just as important, we can recite this prayer before beginning any work, including study and our professional work, whether manual or intellectual.
• It is a way of dealing with the Holy Spirit individually as the person he is.