Come, Holy Spirit
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and enkindle in them the fire of your love.
V. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created.
R. And you shall renew the face of the earth.
Let us pray. O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant us in the same Spirit to be truly wise and ever to rejoice in His consolation. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Where Does This Prayer Come From?
No one person wrote this prayer.
It's three pieces of the Church's Pentecost liturgy, stitched together.
Piece one:
"Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful…"
It's an old Latin antiphon for Pentecost.
Veni, Sancte Spiritus.
It goes back at least to the Middle Ages.
Today it is the Alleluia verse at Mass on Pentecost Sunday.
(Don't confuse it with the longer Pentecost Sequence.
That one starts with the same Latin words, but it's a different prayer.)
Why "the fire of your love"?
Remember Pentecost.
And there appeared to them parted tongues as it were of fire, and it sat upon every one of them…
— Acts 2:3
Piece two:
the versicle and response.
Straight out of the Psalms.
Thou shalt send forth thy spirit, and they shall be created: and thou shalt renew the face of the earth.
— Psalm 103:30 (Psalm 104 in most modern Bibles)
Wait.
Created?
That psalm is about God giving life to the whole world.
We ask the same Spirit to make us new.
Piece three:
the closing prayer.
"O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful…"
For centuries it was the Church's opening prayer for Pentecost.
It shows up in Mass books more than a thousand years old.
Today it opens the Votive Mass of the Holy Spirit.
Even Martin Luther built on the antiphon.
He added two stanzas to a German hymn based on it, printed in 1524.
The Catechism puts it plainly.
"The simplest and most direct prayer is also traditional, 'Come, Holy Spirit.'"
— CCC 2671
Three short pieces.
One big request.
Come.
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