Come, Holy Spirit: the Prayer to the Holy Spirit in Full

The prayer has three parts. First a call to the Holy Spirit himself. Then a verse from the Psalms in two halves: when people pray together, one voice says the first and everyone answers with the second. Then a short prayer to the Father, which the Church calls a collect. The Catechism names both ways of praying here. The traditional petition is to “invoke the Father through Christ our Lord to give us the Consoler Spirit,” and yet “the simplest and most direct prayer is also traditional”: “Come, Holy Spirit” (CCC 2671). This prayer does both: first the direct call, then the prayer to the Father.

“Come, Holy Spirit.” A call, not a formula, and a call to Someone. The Holy Spirit is not a force or a feeling but a Person: “one of the persons of the Holy Trinity, consubstantial with the Father and the Son” (CCC 685), one God with them. That is why we can speak to him directly. He is not far away; he was given at Baptism. But the Catechism asks, “how could we not pray to the Spirit too?” (CCC 2670), since it is he who draws us to pray at all. St. Paul says the same from the other side: “no man can say the Lord Jesus, but by the Holy Ghost” (1 Corinthians 12:3, Douay-Rheims).

“Fill the hearts of your faithful.” A heart can be full of many things: worry, plans, noise, an old hurt. This line asks God to fill that room himself. St. Paul says what the Spirit fills it with: “the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost, who is given to us” (Romans 5:5, Douay-Rheims). The Catechism calls that love God’s first gift, “containing all others” (CCC 733).

“And kindle in them the fire of your love.” Fire is the sign of Pentecost. In the upper room “there appeared to them parted tongues as it were of fire, and it sat upon every one of them: and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:3–4, Douay-Rheims). The Catechism says fire “symbolizes the transforming energy of the Holy Spirit’s actions” (CCC 696). Fire warms, gives light, and changes what it touches. A heart set alight is not only a warm feeling on a good day; it is a life that slowly changes from the inside.

Every day. The Church invites us to call on the Holy Spirit daily, “especially at the beginning and the end of every important action” (CCC 2670). Here are the moments where it helps most.

In the morning. Prayed with the Morning Offering, before the phone and the news, it hands the day to God from the start.

Before study, an exam or work. This is its oldest everyday use: it has been a schoolroom prayer for well over a century. It fits a student before a test, a teacher before class, and anyone starting a project, an interview or a long shift.

For guidance before a decision. Discerning a vocation, choosing a school, a job, a move, a hard conversation with a child or a spouse. Pray it before you decide and again after. The Spirit does not decide in your place; he gives light to the one who asks for it. For the decision itself, a prayer for guidance walks through St. Ignatius’s way of discerning.

When you do not know how to pray. Some days there are no words. “The Spirit also helpeth our infirmity. For we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit himself asketh for us with unspeakable groanings” (Romans 8:26, Douay-Rheims). Three words are enough to start: Come, Holy Spirit. And if you pray it and feel nothing, it has not failed. The Spirit works deeper than feelings. The Catechism calls dryness in prayer “the moment of sheer faith” (CCC 2731), and the saints knew it well. Keep asking.

With the Rosary. The descent of the Holy Spirit is the third Glorious Mystery, prayed on Wednesdays and Sundays. Some say this prayer before that decade, or before the whole Rosary; how to pray the Rosary walks through every bead.

In the novena before Pentecost. After the Ascension the apostles waited in the upper room, “persevering with one mind in prayer with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus” (Acts 1:14, Douay-Rheims). In 1897 Pope Leo XIII decreed that every parish keep a novena before Pentecost, every year. The date moves with Easter; Pentecost gives this year’s.

Before Confirmation. Confirmation brings “the full outpouring of the Holy Spirit as once granted to the apostles” at Pentecost (CCC 1302). Saying it each day of the preparation is a good way in, for the one being confirmed, for the sponsor, and for the parents. The first two lines are short enough for a child to learn by heart; say them together before school or homework.

A short prayer of our own, for the start of a day of study or work:

Every part of it is older than the prayer as a whole. All three come from the Mass of Pentecost as it was celebrated for centuries in the Roman Rite.

The antiphon. In Latin it is Veni, Sancte Spiritus, reple tuorum corda fidelium, et tui amoris in eis ignem accende. In the older Roman Missal it was sung after the Epistle on Pentecost Sunday, as the second of two Alleluia verses, and a rubric had everyone kneel as soon as it began. The first Alleluia verse was the psalm line, Emitte Spiritum tuum. The Catechism quotes the antiphon whole as an example of the traditional prayer to the Spirit that “every liturgical tradition has developed” in antiphons and hymns (CCC 2671). Its words are still sung at Mass on Pentecost Sunday.

The collect. The closing prayer was the collect of Pentecost Day, which began Deus, qui hodierna die corda fidelium: “O God, who on this day…” To pray it on any day, the words “on this day” were simply left out.

This is the Latin as the Holy See printed it in 1952 in the Enchiridion indulgentiarum, its official book of indulgenced prayers (n. 287), with the versicle and the collect.

Two famous Latin hymns to the Spirit are often mixed up with this prayer, and one of them even begins with the same three words.

The Pentecost Sequence, “Veni, Sancte Spiritus.” It begins Veni, Sancte Spiritus, et emitte caelitus lucis tuae radium: “Come, Holy Spirit, and send from heaven the ray of your light.” It is a hymn of ten short stanzas, called the Golden Sequence since the Middle Ages, and the Church sings it at Mass on Pentecost Day, the one day besides Easter when a sequence is required (General Instruction of the Roman Missal, 64). It dates from around 1200 and is usually credited either to Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, or to Pope Innocent III. So “Veni, Sancte Spiritus” can mean two different texts: this short prayer, or the Sequence. The Taizé chant “Veni, Sancte Spiritus,” with music by Jacques Berthier, takes its verses from the Sequence.