Join EWTN’s Novena to the Holy Spirit, the ‘oldest novena in the life of the Church’

EWTN launches a pray-along novena to the Holy Spirit beginning Friday, May 15 leading up to the Solemnity of Pentecost.

In preparation for the Solemnity of Pentecost, this year celebrated on May 24, EWTN will release daily recordings of the Holy Spirit Novena on its Live Mass & Devotions YouTube page beginning Friday, May 15.

“Itʼs the oldest novena in the life of the Church, going back to the time where Jesus ascended into heaven, in that time where he promised the Holy Spirit upon the apostles, and where the apostles gathered together in the Upper Room with the Blessed Virgin,” EWTN Chaplain Father John Paul Mary, MFVA, said. “You can read the exact account in the Acts of the Apostles itself, where they awaited the coming of the Holy Spirit after our Lord ascended into heaven.”

Father John Paul, who will lead the novena each day, explained that each day will feature a meditation on the Holy Spirit, along with a consecration prayer. “After the consecration prayer, there’s a prayer for the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit,” he said, noting that there is also a fruit of the Holy Spirit connected with each day.

The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear. The nine fruits associated with each day of the novena are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

“The Holy Spirit is really the way in which salvation is carried out in the life of the Church,” Father John Paul said. “Christ is known through the power of the Holy Spirit and that nobody can really say Jesus is Lord, Saint Paul says, unless it is in the Holy Spirit.”

Father John Paul emphasized the importance of praying to the Holy Spirit leading up to Pentecost as the disciples did with the Blessed Virgin Mary, so that “we can receive the Holy Spirit” like they did.

While some may regard the Holy Spirit as the “forgotten person of the Trinity,” Father John Paul said “itʼs really the Holy Spirit that changes us, that conforms us into Jesus himself and makes us other Christs in the world.”