Veni Creator Spiritus
Come, Holy Spirit, Creator blest, and in our souls take up Thy rest; come with Thy grace and heavenly aid to fill the hearts which Thou hast made.
When Jesus ascended into heaven 40 days after the Resurrection, He instructed His Apostles to remain Jerusalem, where they were to wait for the promise of the Father to be fulfilled that they would be “clothed with power from on high.”
Fearful and not fully understanding this promise, the Apostles gathered in the upper room in Jerusalem to wait and pray. For nine days they prayed, and on the tenth day, the Feast of Pentecost, they received the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
The nine days the Apostles spent in prayer prepared them to receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, knowledge, good counsel, courage, reverence for God, and the holy fear of His awesome power. These gifts and their fruits - charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and goodness – flowed out beyond measure to the Apostles, enabling them to cast off fear and go out to spread the Good News, and the Church was born. These nine days of prayer before Pentecost became the first and oldest Novena.
In his 1897 Encyclical on the Holy Spirit, Pope Leo XIII commanded that this novena should take place before Pentecost throughout the whole Catholic Church and he granted indulgences to those who pray it. It is still the only novena that the Church officially recommends to all the faithful.
There are many other novena prayers, but the idea of nine days of prayer comes from this first Novena. Many such prayers are powerful and bring graces and blessings to those who pray them faithfully and submit the outcome to God’s holy will. But the one thing that Jesus promised would come to those who asked, unfailingly, is the Holy Spirit. When we ask for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we are truly asking God to make His home in our heart. And God, who knows how to give good gifts to His children, will hear and answer us, and He will come to us and dwell in us, filling us with the light and love of His Holy Spirit.
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