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Many of us will have grown up with the beautiful Catholic tradition of praying a ‘Novena’. The tradition - and name - of this devotion comes from the Latin for ‘nine’, which may seem an arbitrary number until we understand that there are nine days between Our Lord’s Ascension into Heaven and the Descent of God the Holy Spirit upon our Lady and the Apostles at Pentecost. The Acts of the Apostles recounts how the Lord told His Apostles to await the coming of the Holy Spirit and to anticipate His descent by prayer. Acts tells us that the Lord said, ‘…you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’

In imitation of our Lady and the Apostles, I invite you between this Thursday 29 May, the feast of the Ascension of the Lord, and Sunday 8 June, the solemnity of Pentecost, to pray these nine days of prayer, imploring the help, fruits, and gifts of the Holy Spirit anew, promised to us when we received the Sacrament of Confirmation. One beautiful prayer to the Holy Spirit I recommend, and you might recite this daily for this original Novena, taking it into your daily prayers ahead of Pentecost:

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.

Let us pray. O God, who have taught the hearts of the faithful by the light of the Holy Spirit, grant that in the same Spirit we may be truly wise and ever rejoice in his consolation.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.