Jack Levison, author of Fresh Air: The Holy Spirit for an Inspired Life and 40 Days With the Holy Spirit (which I wrote about here and here) has just had another book published by Paraclete Press. The book, Holy Spirit, I Pray, is a book of prayers to the Holy Spirit.
A slender, beautifully bound book, Holy Spirit, I Pray contains a series of prayers divided in categories – prayers for morning, prayers for nighttime, prayers for discernment, prayers for crisis and prayers for anytime. Each prayer is accompanied by the Scripture text that inspired the creation of the prayer.
As I observed to parishioners at Our Lady of Lourdes when I led a book study of one of Levison’s earlier books two years ago, it seems to me that the Holy Spirit often gets short shrift. We know that we get the gift of the spirit at Pentecost, some of us can even list the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but we don’t spend a lot of time focusing on that person of the Trinity. Levison observes in his introduction to this book, citing St. Basil, the Holy Spirit is often seen as a medium of prayer and worship rather than as an object of prayer and worship. (Clearly there are exceptions, and there are some well-known prayers to the Holy Spirit.)
There are many beautiful prayers in this book. I thought I’d here share one of those that immediately resonated with me.
Holy Spirit
Spirit of Jesus
Spirit of Truth:
Ignite in me a passion for the truth
Instill in me a craving for knowledge
Inspire in me a hunger for wisdom.
Not just any truth, random knowledge, indiscriminate wisdom
But the truth about Jesus
who barked at his mother
who cried like a baby
who wore the towel of a servant and washed feeg
who prayed the night away
who broiled fish on a spring morning.
Come to me as
the Spirit of Truth
the Spirit of Jesus
Holy Spirit.
Amen.
You might consider this book as part of your Lenten prayer.
Creo en Dios! 