Pentecost

As we come to the end of the Easter Season with the celebration of Pentecost tomorrow, I wanted to share a beautiful invocation of the Holy Spirit that we used for prayer in the past few days. It was written by St. Symeon the New Theologian, a tenth century poet and mystic in the Greek Orthodox tradition who believed that we can and should experience God directly. In fact, he reportedly suggested that if we do not taste eternal life here and now, we will not experience it after we die. More positively, he believed that we can come to this experience through contemplative prayer when we withdraw from the world of the senses and arrive at a profound interior stillness. Here is his prayer for the Holy Spirit:

Invocation of the Holy Spirit

Come, true light.
Come, life eternal.
Come, hidden mystery.
Come, treasure without name.

Come, reality beyond all words.
Come, person beyond all understanding.
Come, rejoicing without end.
Come, light that knows no evening.

Come, unfailing expectation of the saved.
Come, raising of the fallen.
Come, resurrection of the dead.
Come, all-powerful, for unceasingly you create, refashion and change all things by your will alone.

Come, for your name fills our hearts with longing, and is ever on our lips.
Come, for you are yourself the desire that is within me.
Come, my breath and my life.
Come, the consolation of my humble soul.

Come, my joy, my glory, my endless delight.

St. Symeon the New Theologian