On the Feast of Pentecost, you may have heard a special hymn sung before the Alleluia and after the second reading. This does not happen often – really only twice a year, on Easter and Pentecost. This hymn is called a “Sequence,” and it is a unique prayer which serves to open our hearts to the particular gifts of grace God has to offer through the celebration of the feast day. The Easter sequence begins with the words, “Christians to the Paschal Victim, offer your thankful praises!” It recounts the victory of Christ and gives us hope in the new life God now brings to us.
The Pentecost sequence is a poetic prayer to the Holy Spirit, begging Him to come and bring his healing presence to our hearts. For the next 10 weeks, I will be offering a brief reflection on each of the ten stanzas of the Pentecost Sequence. Even though we’re now in Ordinary Time, there is never a bad time to reflect on the Holy Spirit and his work in our life! Plus, we can see how the power of Pentecost is meant to spring forth into the entirety of our lives – the ordinary and the extraordinary.
The prayer begins:
Veni, Sancte Spiritus, Come, Holy Spirit,
et emitte caelitus send forth the heavenly
lucis tuae radium. radiance of your light.
Darkness, thirst, need, want, desire, lack – these words describe well the state of a heart that awaits the Holy Spirit. In that heart, there is something missing. There is something – someone, rather – who must come to fill this void. Nothing else will satisfy. Nothing else can fill the heart in a truly satisfying way except the one who made it. As St. Augustine famously wrote, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
The first word of the Pentecost Sequence is therefore, “Come!” This plea pours forth from the hearts of all Christians. In this first stanza, He is described as heavenly light. Throughout this Sequence, the Holy Spirit is additionally sketched as a comforter, our consolation, heavenly dew, refreshment, fire, a healer, and a generous giver. In other words, He is everything we need and want from God.
As we ask Him to fill us with His light, we might meditate on the soft light of a candle, the ultimate power of the light of the sun, the lively light of a fire, or the raging light of an uncontrollable inferno. The Holy Spirit is Love itself, and in that regard, his light will look like all and each of these at different times in our life. I’m reminded of the Song of Songs, “for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame.Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it.” May the light of that love fill our hearts. Come, Holy Spirit, set us on fire with your love!