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Veni, Sancte Spiritus (V)

May 22nd, 2013 by

Veni, Sancte Spiritus (I) – Verses 1 and 2
II – Verses 3 and 4
III – Verses 5 and 6
IV – Verses 7 and 8
V – Verses 9 and 10

Verse 9

Veni

 

Da tuis fidelibus,
in te confidentibus,
sacrum septenarium. 

- – -

On the faithful, who adore
and confess you, evermore
in your sevenfold gift descend.

In the last two verses we are asking for gifts.  “Give to your faithful,” we pray, grant to those who are trusting completely in you the sevenfold gifts (or the sevenfold holy things).

What are these sevenfold gifts?

Wisdom
Understanding
Counsel
Fortitude
Knowledge
Piety
Fear of the Lord

These are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, as listed in Isaiah 11:2-3.  (Although you will actually find only six gifts listed there, the seventh, piety, is included in the Septuagint and the Vulgate translations of Isaiah.

 Verse 10

Veni

Da virtutis meritum,
da salutis exitum,
da perenne gaudium,
Amen, Alleluia.

- – -

- – -

Give them virtue’s sure reward
give them your salvation, Lord;
give them joys that never end.
Amen. Alleluia.

Give them virtue’s sure reward. As St. Ignatius says, all good gifts descend from above, as rays descend from the sun, and waters from the fountain. Anything in ourselves that we can claim as good, any virtue, we recognize as a gift from God. So we’re not talking about earning something, nor getting a prize for being virtuous — rather we could say that the reward comes with the gifts itself.

We have to cooperate, of course. We allow ourselves to be disposed, like the friends and family of Jesus who gather in the Upper Room between the Ascension and Pentecost (Acts 1), persevering in prayer even though they don’t really know yet what is going on, or what their call is for the future.

As they pray in expectation of the Spirit, the Spirit is paradoxically already praying in them — for otherwise how would prayer be possible? — preparing them to receive that pentecostal outpouring of the Spirit when it is given.

…Just as the Spirit also prays in us whenever we pray. Because the Spirit prays in us, says Karl Rahner, “our prayer is infinitely more than our prayer. Because [the Spirit] helps, our prayer is a piece of the melody that rushes through the heavens, an aroma of incense that sweetly rises to the eternal altars of heaven before the triune God” (The Need and the Blessing of Prayer).

Give them your salvation, Lord,
Give them joys that never end.

When I was a senior in high school, our English teacher, Mrs. McLeod, was skilled in leading us into discussions that made us think about life. I vividly remember one day when she commented that children have the ability to be either totally happy or totally sad — can be one and then the other — but that for adults, joy is usually intermingled with sorrow.

Now remember, we were 17 or 18 years old then, and thought of ourselves as pretty grown up. Well, a girl in the class raised her hand and said, “But Mrs. McLeod, sometimes I’m completely happy.”

To which Mrs. McLeod very kindly and gently replied, “Yes, but Sue, you’re still a child.”

I hope Sue retained her capacity for joy. Here we are asking for the joy of a child of God: total joy, a never-ending and never-failing joy. And we are asking for the joy of God’s eternity, experienced in God’s own heart, and bestowed in God’s own time.

Amen. Alleluia!

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Veni, Sancte Spiritus (IV)

May 19th, 2013 by

Veni, Sancte Spiritus (I) – Verses 1 and 2
II – Verses 3 and 4
III – Verses 5 and 6
IV – Verses 7 and 8
V - Verses 9 and 10

Verses 7 and 8

Veni

 

Lava quod est sordidum,
riga quod est aridum,
sana quod est saucium.

- – -

Heal our wounds, our strength renew;
on our dryness pour your dew;
wash the stains of guilt away.

Veni

 

Flecte quod est rigidum,
fove quod est frigidum,
rege quod est devium.

 - – -

Bend the stubborn heart and will;
melt the frozen, warm the chill;
guide the steps that go astray.

More literally, these verses read:

Wash what is dirty (or shabby),
moisten (bedew) what is dry,
heal what is hurt (or distressed).

Bend what is stiff (or inflexible),
warm (or caress) what is cold,
guide what has gone astray.

According to J. B. Phillips:

Every time we say, “I believe in the Holy Spirit,” we mean that we believe that there is a living God able and willing to enter human personality and change it.

J. B. Phillips, Plain Christianity

The Spirit is indeed working to transform us. However, one source of our humility resides in the likelihood that not everything in us that needs fixing is going to be fixed in this life. And this fact of our own continued imcompleteness is also a source of compassion toward other people — also in whom not everything that needs fixing is going to be fixed in this life.

Not to mention the possibility that what we think needs fixing in other people (or even in ourselves) may not be what God thinks needs fixing.

And so we continue to entrust ourselves to the Holy Wisdom of God.

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Veni, Sancte Spiritus (III)

May 15th, 2013 by

Veni, Sancte Spiritus (I) – Verses 1 and 2
II – Verses 3 and 4
III – Verses 5 and 6
IV – Verses 7 and 8
V - Verses 9 and 10

Verse 5

Veni

O lux beatissima,

reple cordis intima

tuorum fidelium.

- – - – -

O most blessed Light divine,
shine within these hearts of thine,
and our inmost being fill!

We are taken back to the first verse, where we call for light; and we are also reminded of the short prayer,

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful,
enkindle in them the fire of your love.
Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created,
and you shall renew the face of the earth!

We need you to fill us, because (see the next verse) without you we have nothing!

6.

Veni

Sine tuo numine,

nihil est in homine,

nihil est innoxium.

- – - – -

Where you are not, we have naught,
nothing good in deed or thought,
nothing free from taint of ill.

The first line of this verse is hard to translate.  The Latin word numine comes from the word numen, which can mean a nodding of the head, and therefore by extension a consent, or even divinity. 

So how shall we understand this line?

Where you are not, we say, we have nothing.  Or literally, without your nod — your consent to our Be-ing — we would not exist. We can imagine a smiling God, saying Yes to us, loving us into being).

Or even, we might be praying here, without your numinousness we are nothing.  The numinous is filled with a sense of the divine. Without YOU, we say, without your mysterious presence, which may even seem sometimes like absence, without this holiness, this beyondness — there is nothing in us.

And what is more, nothing would be harmless (nihil est innoxium). It is your Spirit that protects us.  Your Holy Spirit protects our spirits from harm, even when we are very hurt.

And without you there would be reason to fear.  In today’s world – and probably in yesterday’s world as well – it can seem as if there is an enemy lurking around every corner. We are taught not to trust each other. The Spirit of God, however, introduces us to each other, as John V. Taylor says in The Go-Between God, and introduces us to creation, so that we can see each other with new eyes.

Without a proper introduction, the world does not seem safe — indeed is not safe. But the Holy Spirit brings about community and communion. Notice the Trinitarian blessing at the end of the Second Letter to the Corinthians.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

(2 Corinthians 13:13)

The Spirit’s particular gift is described as communion. The Greek word is koinonia, which can also mean “participation [in].” When one participates in the Holy Spirit, the other person is no longer viewed as an adversary or as someone to be exploited.  The Spirit makes communion with others possible.

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Veni, Sancte Spiritus (II)

May 3rd, 2013 by

Veni, Sancte Spiritus (I) – Verses 1 and 2
II – Verses 3 and 4
III – Verses 5 and 6
IV – Verses 7 and 8
V - Verses 9 and 10

Verse 3.

Veni


Consolator optime,

dulcis hospes animae,

dulce refrigerium.

 

You, of comforters the best;
you, the soul’s most welcome guest;
sweet refreshment here below.

Oh, how we need consoling! The pain of life leads us to seek consolation, even sometimes just a way to feel better. But other, lesser consolers abound. We can be temporarily consoled — or at least distracted — by them, but they can lead us away from true consolation, especially if they are those false comforters that lead us only toward addiction.

God’s Spirit is the only true consoler of my heart.

A couple of points about the comfort of God’s Spirit:

Red bullet Sometimes comfort means that a painful situation is removed, a burden entirely lifted. Other times, though, the comfort is paradoxically within the context of the pain.

Sometimes comfort means knowing that God is still God, and we are still held safe, even when all seems lost.  [See “Going Down with the Ship.”]

God is still God, even when Jesus goes to the cross. (We know now that the cross is not the end of the story.) God is still God, and we are still in the hands of the good God, even when we go to the cross, even should we go down with the ship.

Red bullet The comfort of God includes both a call and a challenge. And this takes us to the Spirit as the soul’s most welcome guest.

Come pleasant guest of my soul!
Come, the soul’s most welcome guest!

The Holy Spirit is pleasant, delightful, the most welcome guest of all guests, because in reality, she is not a guest at all: no, the Spirit dwells here.  So the Holy Spirit is the soul’s most welcome guest because in reality, our hearts are home to God, and we are most at home in the Spirit of God.

The Holy Spirit reveals to us our essential being, which is in God, and God in us.

But the Holy Spirit, who is the soul’s most welcome guest, is also a challenging guest. The Spirit calls us to comfort others in that same Spirit. We are to become one with the divine mercy, compassion, goodness, tenderness, love. It is only in God, only in the Spirit of Jesus that we can become mercy and compassion for the world, the way Jesus was. It is certainly only in Jesus that we can love our enemies, something which would otherwise be far too much for us. We are called not only to be comforted, but also to become comforters in the Holy Spirit who is the Comforter.

Verse 4.

Veni
In labore requies,

in aestu temperies,

in fletu solatium.

 

In our labor, rest most sweet;
grateful coolness in the heat;
solace in the midst of woe.

Or more literally: In labor, rest; in heat, mildness; in tears, solace (or comfort).

Here we have some of the details of being comforted. We receive refreshment, rest, coolness, solace; and then in the Spirit, we become that restful, cooling, consoling (and sometimes challenging) presence for the world.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation,
who consoles us in all our affliction,
so that we may be able to console those
who are in any affliction
with the consolation with which we ourselves
are consoled by God.
(2 Corinthians 1:3-4)

 

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Veni, Sancte Spiritus

May 2nd, 2013 by

Veni Sancte Spiritus (I) – Verses 1 and 2
II – Verses 3 and 4
III – Verses 5 and 6
IV – Verses 7 and 8
V - Verses 9 and 10

swirl

There are many reasons to pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  Liturgically speaking, we are approaching the feasts of Ascension and Pentecost.  Between the Ascension of Jesus and the tongues of fire on Pentecost, the friends of Jesus gathered in prayer in the first Cenacle—the Upper Room.  (See Acts 1:1-14.)  Although they probably did not understand what it meant, they remembered the promise of Jesus: “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (1:8).

We also pray for the gifts of the Spirit because in very practical terms, the nations and cities of the world (including the New Orleans area in which I live), along with many individual hearts and lives, are profoundly affected in one way or another by a spirit of violence or vengeance or turmoil.  We need the Holy Spirit.

Since we pray for and long for the coming of the Spirit, I would like to reflect on the marvelous prayer, the “Veni Sancte Spiritus”—the Pentecost Sequence—in this and in the posts to follow.

Verse 1.

Veni
…Sancte Spiritus,

et emitte caelitus

lucis tuae radium.

   – - – - -
COME, Holy Spirit, come,
and from your celestial home
shed a ray of light divine!

[See "Why Pray 'Come?'" for thoughts on this first verse.]

Verse 2.

Veni
…pater pauperum,

veni, dator munerum

veni, lumen cordium.

  – - – - -
Come, Father of the poor!
Come, Source of all our store (literally, “giver of gifts”),
Come, within our bosoms shine.

Various saints have been known as father of the poor: St. Francis, St. Peter Claver, St. Vincent de Paul. There is even a former dictator, Getúlio Vargas of Brazil, who was called father of the poor, but who did not deserve the title.

Those who have deserved the title have been called father of the poor because they were in union with the Spirit of Christ, that Spirit who loves the poor and who leads us to honor and to help the poor — and who leads us also to recognize our own deep poverty before God, the giver of all gifts. The Holy Spirit makes us recognize that all is gift, that we have nothing we can call our own.

“Come, within our bosoms shine.” Literally, “Come, light of the heart.”

Come, we pray, for you are my only light, the light of my heart, the heart of my heart.

In the words of the old hymn “Be Thou My Vision”:

Heart of my own heart, whatever befall: still be my vision, O Ruler of all.

Come, light of the heart, for without you, my heart doesn’t even know what is up and what is down. Yet with you, even when I see only darkness, even when I know that my own vision leaves me groping blindly, I can trust that you are my light, and that you are sufficient.

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