Pentecost Sunday, Year 1

A glorious and grace-filled feast of Pentecost to you! This feast ends the Paschal season, and we sing the Veni Creator Spiritus for the last time. This beautiful hymn is attributed to the Benedictine monk Rabanus Maurus (776-856).

Pentecost, 14th c. Missal (Natl. Library of Wales

 It is a tradition to sing it as a novena in the evening at Vespers, begging for the gifts of the Holy Spirit to transform all of us and bring us to the fullness of the life that God so desires us to have. May there be an outpouring of his grace and peace on all the world!

Here's a recording of the Veni Creator Spiritus, sung by the Schola Gregoriana Mediolansis under the direction of Giovanni Vianini, and here's a translation of it (the choir sings it first with women's voices, and repeats it with men and women):

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.

O comforter, to Thee we cry,
O heavenly gift of God Most High,
O fount of life and fire of love,
and sweet anointing from above.

Thou in Thy sevenfold gifts are known;
Thou, finger of God's hand we own;
Thou, promise of the Father, Thou
Who dost the tongue with power imbue.

Kindle our sense from above,
and make our hearts o'erflow with love;
with patience firm and virtue high
the weakness of our flesh supply.

Far from us drive the foe we dread,
and grant us Thy peace instead;
so shall we not, with Thee for guide,
turn from the path of life aside.

Oh, may Thy grace on us bestow
the Father and the Son to know;
and Thee, through endless times confessed,
of both the eternal Spirit blest.

Now to the Father and the Son,
Who rose from death, be glory given,
with Thou, O Holy Comforter,
henceforth by all in earth and heaven. Amen.