Come, Holy Spirit! (Pentecost Sunday 2019)

Come, Creator Spirit. Imbue us with Jesus’ strength and breath. Without your inspiration and your grace, we will not believe in him in the right way and we will not dare follow his footsteps.  Without you, there will not be renewal in the Church and our hope will be extinguished.  Come and share with us Jesus’ life-breath! Come, Holy Spirit. Remind us of the good words Jesus spoke. Without your light and your testimony about him, we will keep forgetting God’s kind face, the Gospel will become a dead letter; the Church will not be able to announce any good news. Come and teach us to listen only to Jesus! Come, Spirit of Truth. Make us walk in the truth of Jesus. Without your light and your guidance, we will never be freed from our mistakes and lies, nothing new and true will emerge among us and we will be like the blind that lead other blind people. Come and change us into disciples and witnesses of Jesus! Come, Spirit of the Father. Teach us to cry out, as did Jesus, to a God who is “Abba.” Without your warmth and your joy, we will live as orphans who have lost their Father, we will call upon God with our lips but not with our hearts, our prayers will be empty words. Come and teach us to pray with the words and the heart of Jesus! Come, Good Spirit. Convert us to the project of “God’s Kingdom” that Jesus ushered in. Without your renewing power, no one will change our tired hearts, we will not have the courage to build a more human world according to God’s wishes—that in your Church, for instance, the last shall never be the first.  Without you, we will stay asleep in our bourgeois religion. Come and make us co-workers of Jesus in his project! Come, Spirit of Love. Teach us to love one another with the love with which Jesus loved us. Without your living presence in our midst, the communion of the Church will break apart, the hierarchy and the people will keep on drifting further apart, divisions will grow, dialogue will cease and intolerance will increase. Come and rekindle in our hearts and our hands the fraternal love that makes us like Jesus! Come, Liberating Spirit. Remind us that Christ set us free for freedom, not in order that we may allow slavery to oppress us again. Without your strength and your truth, our joyful following of Jesus will turn into a way of behaving that is proper to slaves. Without you, we will not know the love that gives life, but only our own selfishness that kills, we will lose the freedom that makes the sons and the daughters of God grow and we will be once and again victims of fear, cowardice and fanaticism. Come, Holy Spirit, and infect us with Jesus’ freedom! • AE