Pentecost: Veni, Sancte Spiritus
- Abbey Dupuy
- May 22
- 3 min read
Pentecost is here…the one day in the liturgical year where the Church focuses her attention on celebrating the person of the Trinity we call the Holy Spirit. There’s a mystery to this – do we even know what we’re talking about when we try to explain the Holy Spirit?
Maybe not. But what we have is Jesus’ own words to us:
“I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete to be with you always.” (John 14:16)
The Paraclete. The Advocate. The Comforter. The One who is not confined by time, space, geography, or the limitations of a human body, who continues Jesus’ presence with us here on earth after Jesus’ ascension to heaven.
The Church in its reformed liturgy no longer celebrates Pentecost as an octave (though every year I wonder how we could petition to have that octave restored!)…but Pentecost does still have a special marker. It is one of the two feasts in the year where there is a Sequence, an extra hymn text, required in the liturgy. In its modern placement, the Sequence follows the second reading, directly preceding the Gospel Acclamation.
In the Middle Ages, there were thousands of Sequences, and they embellished the liturgy on many different feasts. Today, the Sequence is required only on Easter Sunday and Pentecost. On Corpus Christi and the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, the Sequence is optional.
So, what is in the Sequence for Pentecost?
The text calls on the Holy Spirit to come to us, to enlighten and comfort us, to bring wisdom, to give us life and to lead us into a happy death. We are asking liturgically for the Spirit to wrap around us fully, from our beginning to our end and everything in between, as individual people and as the unified Body of Christ.
Come, Holy Spirit, come.
And from your celestial home
Shed a ray of light divine.
Come, Refuge of the poor.
Come, source of all our store.
Come, within our bosoms shine.
You, of comforters the best;
You, the soul’s most welcome guest;
Sweet refreshment here below;
In our labor, rest most sweet;
Grateful coolness in the heat;
Solace in the midst of woe.
O most blessed Light divine,
Shine within these hearts of yours,
And our inmost being fill.
Where you are not, we have naught,
Nothing good in deed or thought,
Nothing free from taint of ill.
Heal our wounds, our strength renew;
On our dryness pour your dew;
Wash the stains of guilt away:
Bend the stubborn heart and will;
Melt the frozen, warm the chill;
Guide the steps that go astray.
On the faithful, who adore
And confess you, evermore
In your sevenfold gift descend;
Give them virtue’s sure reward;
Give them your salvation, Lord;
Give them joys that never end.
Amen. Alleluia.
The text of the Sequence has inspired many hymn text writers through the centuries. Some of those hymn texts became chorales, which composers made into chorale preludes for the organ and polyphonic motets for choirs. The treasury of music created from the Sequence for Pentecost is wide and deep. Here are a few samples for your listening.
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