O Holy Spirit, how much we ought to be grateful to you yet how little we are!
That you are totally one with Jesus and the Father, to whom we more often turn, consoles us, but it is no excuse.
We want to be with you who are “of comforters the best; …
the soul’s most welcome guest; sweet refreshment here below.”1
You are light, joy, beauty.
You seize and captivate souls, you inflame hearts,
you inspire deep and decisive thoughts of sanctity
with unexpected personal commitments.
You work what many sermons cannot teach.
You sanctify.
Especially, O Holy Spirit, you who are so discreet,
though impetuous and overwhelming,
yet blow like a soft wind that few know how to hear and perceive,
look upon our rough-edged coarseness, and make us your faithful followers. May no day pass without our invoking you, thanking you, adoring you,
loving you, without our living as your diligent disciples.
We ask of you this grace. Envelop us in your great light of love,
above all in our darkest hour, when the present vision of life comes to a close, dissolving into the one that is eternal.
From Essential Writings, New City Press, New York and New City, London (English translation), p. 102
1 Sequence from the Mass of Pentecost.
