The Holy Spirit: Weekly Summary and Litany of the Holy Spirit Practice
Sunday
We can recognize people who have had a second baptism in the Holy Spirit. They tend to be loving. They tend to be exciting. They want to serve others, and not just be served themselves. They forgive life itself for not being everything they once hoped for. They forgive their neighbors. They forgive themselves for not being as perfect as they would like to be. —Richard Rohr
Monday
The young people Father Richard taught and led on retreats were overwhelmed with the gospel message. Their weekly prayer gatherings began with fervent charismatic prayer and expanded from a group of teenagers to, at times, more than a thousand persons of many ages and diverse backgrounds. —Andreas Ebert and Patricia C. Brockman
Tuesday
There is an Inner Reminder and an Inner Rememberer who holds together all the disparate and fragmented parts of our lives, who fills in all the gaps, who owns all the mistakes, who forgives all the failures—and who loves us into an ever-deeper life. This is the job description of the Holy Spirit. —Richard Rohr
Wednesday
The Holy Spirit as breath is the force that gives life to all life in the cosmos (Genesis 1:2). As it does so, creation becomes understood as an act of God. The Holy Spirit moves the biosphere and gives life to everything in it. —Grace Ji-Sun Kim
Thursday
It was the work of the Spirit to bring those who were strangers together, and to reconcile those who might have otherwise lived apart from those unlike themselves. —Amos Yong
Friday
The mysticism of everyday life is an opportunity to deeply mine the depths of human experience, relationships with others, and our encounters with nature. —Barbara Holmes
Litany of the Holy Spirit
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Comforter and Helper to be with you forever, the Spirit of Truth. . . . You know this Spirit, for it abides with you and will be in you. —John 14:16–17
During his Lenten hermitage some years ago, Father Richard composed this prayer litany of the Holy Spirit, imagining the Spirit’s many descriptive names. We invite you read these names of the Spirit slowly as a way to awaken to the Spirit’s presence in your life. To listen to Father Richard read a longer audio version, click on the image below.
Pure Gift of God
Indwelling Presence
Promise of the Father
Life of Jesus
Pledge and Guarantee
Defense Attorney
Inner Anointing
Homing Device
Stable Witness
Peacemaker
Always Already Awareness
Compassionate Observer
God Compass
Inner Breath
Mutual Yearning Place
Hidden Love of God
Implanted Hope
Seething Desire
Fire of Life and Love
Truth Speaker
Flowing Stream
Wind of Change
Descending Dove
Cloud of Unknowing
Uncreated Grace
Filled Emptiness
Deepest Level of Our Longing
Sacred Wounding
Holy Healing
Will of God
Great Compassion
Inherent Victory You who pray in us, through us, with us, for us, and in spite of us.
Amen, Alleluia!
Experience a version of this practice through video and sound.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2009), 168–169.
Explore Further. . .
- Read Richard on the confidence that the Holy Spirit brings.
- Learn more about this year’s theme Nothing Stands Alone.
- Meet the team behind the Daily Meditations.
Image credit: Arthur Allen, Daily Meditation Spring 2022 Series (detail), 2022, photographs, France. Jenna Keiper, 2022, triptych art, United States. Click here to enlarge the image.
This week’s images by photographer Arthur Allen appear in a form inspired by early Christian/Catholic triptych art: a threefold form that tells a unified story. This year we invited a few photographers to share their vision with us in an artistic exploration for the Daily Meditations. The inspiration questions we asked each artist to create from were: How do you as an artist connect to and engage with (S)spirit and/or tradition(s)? How can we translate deeper truths through a lens? How can we show our inherent connectedness (of humans, nature, other creatures, etc.) through imagery?
Image Inspiration: My point of departure for this project was a question: Do precious things Glow, or are we casting Light on them? I found no answer (in any philosophical sense) but I did notice in my searches that some images—some “strikes to the eye”—positively wanted me to look at them. They called to me as if I had been ignoring them unfairly, the way I might ignore children’s jokes while I am trying to finish taxes. My goal became to ignore them less. I was surprised by how many of these children can fill a day, how many stories they can tell, and just how dream-like their jokes are. —Arthur Allen
Prayer for our community:
God, Lord of all creation, lover of life and of everything, please help us to love in our very small way what You love infinitely and everywhere. We thank You that we can offer just this one prayer and that will be more than enough, because in reality every thing and every one is connected, and nothing stands alone. To pray for one part is really to pray for the whole, and so we do. Help us each day to stand for love, for healing, for the good, for the diverse unity of the Body of Christ and all creation, because we know this is what You desire: as Jesus prayed, that all may be one. We offer our prayer together with all the holy names of God, we offer our prayer together with Christ, our Lord, Amen.
