Introductory Prayer: Lord Jesus, before you left this world to return to the Father, you promised that you would send down the Paraclete upon us. I wait in eagerness for his coming. I trust that he will come again just as he did on that great day of Pentecost to renew the face of the earth.

Petition: Lord, please grant me the grace to love and pay attention to the Holy Spirit in my soul.

Gospel: Jn 7: 37-39

On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, 'Out of the believer's heart shall flow rivers of living water." Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

1. Come Holy Spirit.

"Our heart is restless until it rests in you" (St. Augustine, The Confessions, 1, 1, 1). Our heart yearns for peace and tranquility, and the heart cannot find rest until it fully rests in God. We cannot live without the Holy Spirit. The Lord did everything that he needed to do before he passed on to the next world. Before he departed he said, "It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you" (Jn 16:7).

What would we do without the sweet guest of the soul, and our guide and craftsman in holiness? Without the Holy Spirit, there is little we could do. St. Paul says that we cannot say that Jesus is Lord, were it not for the Holy Spirit (cf. 1Cor 12:3). How important it is for us to have him! How little we can do without him! How much we need him if we are to fulfill our mission!

2. Fill the Hearts of Your Faithful.

Because the Holy Spirit is the anointing of Christ, it is Christ who, as the head of the Body, pours out the Spirit among his members to nourish, heal, and organize them in their mutual functions, to give them life, send them to bear witness, and associate them to his self-offering to the Father and to his intercession for the whole world. "Through the Church's sacraments, Christ communicates his Holy and sanctifying Spirit to the members of his Body" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 738). We are in need of spiritual help. We are spiritual creatures who cannot be without the nourishment of the Lord. Who else is there to drink from but Christ? The world will not fill us. Things leave us dissatisfied, only wanting more, resulting in a vicious cycle that leaves us starving and empty. If we are filling ourselves with ourselves, however it may be, we perish. "My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the LORD" (Ps 84:2). How much the Holy Spirit wants to dwell in our hearts and fill us to the point of overflowing!

3. Kindle in Them the Fire of Your Love.

"God is Love" (1 Jn 4:8) and love is his first gift, containing all others.  "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us" (Rom 5:5). That fire that the Holy Spirit enkindles in a soul is unquenchable. One cannot cease to proclaim the message of the Gospel. One senses the urgency and the need to extend the Kingdom of Christ. This is what love does. Love is something that is outgoing, that pushes us to share what we have with others. Love sets the world ablaze. St. Paul says:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1Cor 13: 1-7).

We can only do these things if we have the Holy Spirit, and if we do, then the Spirit will fill the whole earth.

Conversation with Christ: I want your Holy Spirit to dwell in me, through his power for you to do great things in me just as you did in the hearts of the Apostles on the day when your Spirit came down and rested on the heads of each of them. I need your gift, for there is little that I can do without him. I open my heart to your Holy Spirit so that you can live and work within me.

Questionnaire: This optional questionnaire is intended to help you evaluate your life in light of the inspirations God just gave you during these moments you spent with him in prayer.

1. In what ways do I cultivate my relationship with the Holy Spirit? Do my actions illustrate that I have a relationship with him?

2. When he speaks in my soul, how do I respond? Do I recognize that he is there working within me?

3. How often do I pray to the Holy Spirit?