Pentecost Novena: Day Four

The Pentecost Novena, itself, can be found here. 
 
"O most blessed Light divine, shine within these hearts of yours, and our inmost being fill." - From the Veni Sancte Spiritus, Sequence for Pentecost

The theme of light has been with us throughout the entire Liturgical Year, and it has been steadily advancing. At Christmas, we welcomed Christ, the Light of the World, as He was born in the dead of night. On Easter morning, we rejoiced in His Resurrection, which by tradition is held to have occurred at the dawn of Sunday. But now, at Pentecost, we will welcome the Divine Light of the Holy Spirit once the day has already advanced! For it was at the third hour, nine in the morning, that the Holy Spirit descended upon our Lady and the Apostles in the Upper Room (Acts 2:15). How can we not help but see the comparison this bears to our own spiritual lives?

The first welcomings of the Lord into our lives are always done in darkness; we don't know what He has planned for us, we don't know how it will change our lives. And why is this? We may say it is to humble us. Just as He was born in humility in a stable in Bethlehem, so He wishes a humble birth in us. And if we welcome Him this shall ultimately lead to a death, a death to self, but this death makes room for the new life we are about to live! And it is Christ Who shall now live in us where we no longer live for our own self!

It is then that we are to be vessels to the world. Once we have undergone our own interior conversion, for we cannot convert others unless we be ourselves first converted. Once the Lord shines within our own hearts, once the night is far gone from them and the day is advancing, then we shall advance to bring the light further into the world!

But let us remember the most necessary action we must keep in order to reach that stage, and it is prayer. Only through prayer can we be assured the Holy Spirit shall come to dwell within our souls and remain there. It is in prayer, in communion with the Divine Light, that our eyes and hearts are opened for Him to enter. Prayer is as it were an extinguishing of the shadows and opening of the drapes! The more authentically we pray, the more the Light can fill us!

The Apostles were at prayer when they first received the outpouring of the Spirit (Acts 2:1), and they did not cease to pray especially after they began their mission. Indeed, prayer was one of the most important things they did (Acts 2:46)! Prayer is the means not only for the light to enter the soul, but without prayer is, as it were the supernatural means whereby we prevent the night from coming. This is not to say there will not be dark times for us, dark nights of the soul as St. John of the Cross referred to them, but it means during those times we shall still have the light, for even the night has the light of the moon and the stars.

In these days leading up to the great Solemnity of Pentecost, let us pray that the Divine Light may come more fully to shine within our souls. For then, not only shall we be enlightened but we shall be the means whereby Christ will enlighten all those around us! May one of our prayers these days be that of Blessed John Henry Newman:

"Dear Jesus, help me to spread Your fragrance everywhere I go. Flood my soul with Your spirit and life. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly, that my life may only be a radiance of Yours. Shine through me, and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Your presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus! Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as You shine, so to shine as to be a light to other; the light, O Jesus will be all from You; none of it will be mine; it will be you, shining on others through me. Let me thus praise You the way you love best, by shining on those around me. Let me preach You without preaching, not by words but by my example, by the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do, the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to You. Amen."