The birthday of the Church

For the day the Spirit came.

Fifty days after Easter, wind and fire came into a locked room and a frightened group of people went out into the street and started preaching in languages they had never learned. Everything the Church has done since dates from that morning.

The Prayer

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 rejoice in His consolation.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

A Prayer for Pentecost

Holy Spirit, You did not come quietly.

Come into whatever room I have locked,
and whatever fear keeps it locked.

Give me something to say and the nerve to say it.
Burn off what is useless in me.
And make me part of something larger than my own small life. Amen.

Keeping the Feast

• Pray the novena to the Holy Spirit from Ascension to Pentecost — the Church’s own novena.
• The Veni Sancte Spiritus, the Golden Sequence, is sung at Mass before the Gospel.
• Praying the Veni Creator Spiritus publicly on Pentecost carries a plenary indulgence under the usual conditions.
• Wear red. Everyone should.

About This Feast

Pentecost was already a Jewish harvest festival — which is why Jerusalem was full of people from everywhere, and why the sudden gift of languages had an audience. Grace almost always works through what is already there.