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Pentecost Novena (May 30-June 7; Days 1-2)

May 30, 2025

Fr. John Colacino C.PP.S.

Introduction

From May 29-December 11, 2024 Pope Francis gave a series of 17 catecheses on the Holy Spirit during his Wednesday audiences. Such talks are normally given little of the attention they deserve. So in remembrance of this ministry of the late Pontiff this year's Pentecost novena to the Holy Spirit reproduces excerpts from some of these teachings. The customary format includes a brief Scripture passage, meditation, musical selection and concluding collect.

Day 1

Scripture (Gen 1:1-2)

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. ²The earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep and God’s Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters.

Meditation

The Spirit of God appears to us here as the mysterious power that moves the world from its initial formless, deserted, and gloomy state to its ordered and harmonious state, because the Spirit makes harmony, harmony in life, harmony in the world. In other words, it is He who makes the world pass from chaos to the cosmos, that is, from confusion to something beautiful and ordered. This, in fact, is the meaning of the Greek word kosmos, as well as the Latin word mundus, that is, something beautiful, something ordered, clean, harmonious, because the Spirit is harmony. This still vague hint of the Holy Spirit’s action in creation becomes more precise following the revelation. In a psalm we read: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth” (Ps 33:6); and again: “When thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the face of the ground” (Ps 104:30). This line of development becomes very clear in the New Testament, which describes the Holy Spirit’s intervention in the new creation, using precisely the images that one reads about in connection with the origin of the world: the dove that hovers over the waters of the Jordan at Jesus’ baptism (cf. Mt 3:16); Jesus who, in the Upper Room, breathes on the disciples and says: “Receive the Holy Spirit” (Jn 20:22), just as in the beginning God breathed His breath on Adam (cf. Gen 2:7). The Apostle Paul introduces a new element into this relationship between the Holy Spirit and creation. He speaks of a universe that groans and suffers as in labour pains (cf. Rom 8:22). It suffers because of man who has subjected it to the bondage of corruption (cf. vv. 20-21). It is a reality that concerns us closely and dramatically. The Apostle sees the cause of the suffering of creation in the corruption and sin of humanity that has dragged it into its alienation from God. This remains as true today as it was then. We see the havoc that has been done, and that continues to be wrought upon creation by humanity, especially that part of it that has greater capacity to exploit its resources.

Brothers and sisters, the Holy Spirit of God, who in the beginning transformed chaos into cosmos, is at work to bring about this transformation in every person. Through the prophet Ezekiel, God promises: “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you... And I will put my spirit within you ” (Ez 36:26-27). For our heart resembles that deserted, dark abyss of the first verses of Genesis. Opposed feelings and desires stir within it: those of the flesh and those of the spirit. We are all, in a sense, that kingdom “divided against itself” that Jesus talks about in the Gospel (cf. Mk 3:24). We can say that there is an external chaos around us — social chaos, political chaos. Think of wars, think of so many boys and girls who don’t have enough to eat, about so many social injustices. This is the external chaos. But there is also an internal chaos: internal to each of us. The former cannot be healed unless we begin to heal the latter! Brothers and sisters, let us do a good job of making our internal confusion a clarity of the Holy Spirit. It is the power of God that does this, and we open our hearts so that he can do it. May this reflection stir in us the desire to experience the Creator Spirit. For more than a millennium, the Church has put on our lips the cry to ask for it: “Veni creator Spiritus! Come, O Creator Spirit! Visit our minds. Fill with heavenly grace the hearts you have created”. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to come to us and make us new persons, with the newness of the Spirit. (May 29, 2024)

Musical Selection (with lyrics)

Collect

Lord God,

you sanctify your Church in every nation and people.

Pour out the gifts of your Spirit

across the face of the earth,

and in your merciful kindness

touch the hearts of all believers

as you touched those who first heard

the preaching of the gospel.

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

God for ever and ever. Amen.

Day 2

Scripture (2 Cor 3:17-18)

Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. ¹⁸But we all, with unveiled face seeing the glory of the Lord as in a mirror, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit.

Meditation

In the first three centuries, the Church did not feel the need to give an explicit formulation of her faith in the Holy Spirit. For example, in the Church’s most ancient Creed, the so-called Symbol of the Apostles, after proclaiming: “I believe in God the Father almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was born, died, descended into hell, rose again from the dead and ascended into heaven”, adds: “I believe in the Holy Spirit” and nothing more, without any specification. But it was heresy that drove the Church to define this faith. When this process began – with Saint Athanasius in the fourth century – it was precisely the experience she had of the sanctifying and divinizing action of the Holy Spirit that led the Church to the certainty of the full divinity of the Holy Spirit. This occurred during the Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 381, which defined the divinity of the Holy Spirit with the well-known words we still repeat today in the Creed: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets”. To say that the Holy Spirit “is the Lord” was like saying that He shares the “Lordship” of God, that He belongs to the world of the Creator, not to that of creatures. The strongest affirmation is that He is due the same glory and adoration as the Father and the Son. It is the argument of equality in honour, dear to Saint Basil the Great, who was the main architect of that formula: the Holy Spirit is the Lord, He is God. The Council definition was not a point of arrival, but of departure. And indeed, once the historical reasons that had obstructed a more explicit affirmation of the divinity of the Holy Spirit had been overcome, this was confidently proclaimed in the worship of the Church and in her theology. Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, in the aftermath of the Council, went on to state without hesitation: “Is the Holy Spirit then God? Certainly! Is He consubstantial? Yes, if He is true God” (Oratio 31, 5.10). Having overcome this obstacle, today we can value the most important prerogative for us that is proclaimed in the article of the Creed, namely that the Holy Spirit is “life-giving”, the “giver of life”. Let us ask ourselves: what life does the Holy Spirit give? At the beginning, in creation, the breath of God gives Adam natural life; the statue of mud is made “a living being” (cf. Gen 2:7). Now, in the new creation, the Holy Spirit is He who gives believers new life, the life of Christ, supernatural life, as children of God. Paul can exclaim: “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom 8:2). In all of this, where is the great and consoling news for us? It is that the life given to us by the Holy Spirit is eternal life! Faith frees us from the horror of having to admit that everything ends here, that there is no redemption for the suffering and injustice that reign sovereign on earth. Another of the Apostle’s words assures us of this: “If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through His Spirit who dwells in you” (Rom 8:11). The Spirit dwells in us, He is within us.

Let us cultivate this faith also for those who, often through no fault of their own, are deprived of it and are unable to give meaning to life. And let us not forget to thank Him, who with His death, obtained this inestimable gift for us! (October 16, 2024)

Musical Selection (St. Hildegard of Bingen)

Spiritus sanctus vivificans, vita movens omnia, et radix est in omni creatura ac omnia de inmunditia abluit, tergens crimina ac ungit vulnera, et sic est fulgens ac laudabilis vita, suscitans et resuscitans omnia.

Holy spirit, making life alive, moving in all things, root of all created being, cleansing the cosmos of every impurity, effacing guilt, anointing wounds. You are lustrous and praiseworthy life, You waken and re-awaken everything that is.

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