Wait for the promise of the Father

These days between the Ascension and Pentecost are so full of hope as we wait for "the promise of the Father" (cf. Acts 4). "'I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to dwell with you forever" (Jn 14:16). Here is a promise that fulfills all others, a promise beyond our fondest hopes and wildest dreams, a promise that will never fail and will never be broken. This promise is a person, the Spirit of truth, the Lord and Giver of Life, the bond of love who intimately unites the Father, Son and Spirit in the unfathomable mystery of the Holy Trinity.

Rightly does the Church spend these days in ardent prayer, as our Lord Jesus directed us to do when, upon ascending into heaven, He sent His apostles back to Jerusalem to await the coming of the Holy Spirit on the first Pentecost (cf. Acts 1). This gathering-in-prayer of the apostles with Mary, the Mother of Christ, was the first Pentecost Novena, made in obedience to our Lord. "All these devoted themselves with one accord to prayer, together with some women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers" (Acts 1:14).

On May 4, 1987, Pope Leo XII proclaimed in his encyclical Divinum Illud Munu (On the Holy Spirit): "We decree and command that throughout the whole Catholic Church, this year and in every subsequent year, a novena shall take place before Whit-Sunday (Pentecost), in all parish churches." Sr Elena Guerra, the founder of the Oblate Sisters of the Holy Spirit in Italy, urged Pope Leo XIII to lead the Church back to the Cenacle, and from 1895-1903 she was led by the Holy Spirit to write to him twelve confidential letters requesting a renewed preaching on the Holy Spirit. Because Pope Leo promoted the Pentecost Novena for the unity of Christian, this is a special time to pray that we may all be one as the Father and the Son are one (Jn 17:21). This is also an excellent time to read and ponder anew the seventeen chapter of John's Gospel, often called Christ's "high priestly prayer".

As I make my own Pentecost Novena this year, I am praying Pope John XXII's prayer to the Holy Spirit which he wrote for and prayed at the beginning of the Second Vatican Council. Every line is a prayer in itself, and every phrase reveals to us something of how the Holy Spirit can transform us if we allow Him to seize us and work in us. Come, Holy Spirit, come!

O HOLY GHOST, PARACLETE,

perfect in us the work begun by Jesus:

enable us to continue to pray fervently in the name of the whole world:

hasten in every one of us the growth of a profound interior life;

give vigor to our apostolate so that it may reach all men and all peoples, all redeemed by the Blood of Christ and all belonging to him.

Mortify in us our natural pride, and raise us to the realms of holy humility, of the real fear of God, of generous courage.

Let no earthly bond prevent us from honoring our vocation, no cowardly onsiderations disturb the claims of justice, nor meanness confine the immensity of charity within the narrow bounds of petty selfishness.

Let everything in us be on a grand scale: the search for truth and the devotion to it, and readiness for self-sacrifice, even to the cross and death;

and may everything finally be according to the last prayer of the Son to his heavenly Father, and according to your Spirit, O Holy Spirit Of Love, which the Father and the Son desired to be poured out over the Church and its institutions, over the souls of
men and over nations.

AMEN.

Blessed John XXIII