This year Pentecost falls on May 31st, which is usually the Feast of the Visitation.
Let us pray for the descent of the Holy Spirit into our souls with the words of Visitation’s Founders, St Jane de Chantal and St Francis de Sales.
Day 1 May 21
St. Jane said: ” Do you know what you must do to receive the Holy Spirit? You must be still, that is, have the mind and affection in solitude, raising yourself, as a prophet says, above yourself. You must ask for this Holy Spirit, desire him by affection and draw him to you by good actions. If we are so happy as to receive him in the spirit of humility, he will bring into our hearts and souls light for our amendment and grace and love for our advancement in this way of love.“
JSJ 239
Day 2 May 22
St Jane said: All day and at each hour, at each moment, if possible, let us raise our hearts to God. Let us keep ourselves in the disposition to be guided by His Divine goodness and to acquiesce promptly in the effects of His great pleasure in everything He shall permit to happen to us. This is the only and true means of being in the disposition to receive the graces God has prepared for us. Let us put it well in practice. . . .Let us remain very recollected in acts of thanksgiving for this signal benefit which God has granted to the world by sending His Holy Spirit. In fine, during the whole course of our life, let us never depart in anything, so far as possible, from this holy exercise.
JSJ 238Day 3 May 23
St Francis said: To receive the grace of God into our hearts they must be emptied of our own vain-glory. Humility repels Satan, and preserves the graces and gifts of the Holy Spirit within us. IDL 3: 4
Day 4 May 24
St Francis said: “You must speak also to Jesus Christ and to the Holy Spirit in whatever way He inspires you, and even pray as well to the Church: “O Mother of the children of God, may I never be separated from you; I want to live and die in you.” LSD 133
Day 5 May 25
St Jane said”
When the hour comes for prayer, our soul which has been awaiting this blessed moment with a holy impatience, must rise up without delay, at the given signal in order to receive the honor which is about to be paid to us. Then we must call down the Holy Spirit, invoke the Blessed Virgin, our good angel, and take some of the saints to act as advocates in our appeal, and to keep us company in God’s presence. The most suitable state of mind for mental prayer is that which will lead us into it with a heart completely detached, so that the soul, in all its interior powers and resources, may appear naked before God and may bow down before His will, sometimes doing this by means of a deliberate act and fresh intention.JSJ 344-45
Day 6
St Francis said
Although the Holy Spirit first infuses charity into a soul and then increases it by adding one degree to another and one perfection of love to another, still the resolution to prefer God’s will before all things is the essential point of sacred love, and that in which the image of eternal love, that is, of the Holy Spirit, is represented. Hence we cannot remove a single piece of it without all charity immediately perishing.
TLG 1, 4:4, 211
Day 7
St Francis said
Like a little grain of mustard seed, our works are in no way comparable in greatness to the tree of glory they produce. Still they have the vigor and virtue to produce it because they proceed from the Holy Spirit. By a wondrous fusion of his grace into our hearts, he makes our works become his and yet at the same time lets them remain our own, since we are members of a head of which he is the Spirit and since we are engrafted on a tree of which he is the divine sap. Because he thus acts in our works, and in a certain manner we operate or co-operate in his action, he leaves us as our part all the merit and profit of our services and good works, while we leave him all honor and all praise for them, for we acknowledge that the beginning , progress, and end of whatever good we do depend on his mercy.
TLG 2, 11:6, 211-12
Day 8
St Jane said:
Believe me, bring to your prayer the deepest peace of heart you can. Shut yourselves within this little interior heaven without allowing yourselves to be distracted by the things of sense, and be certain that you will not fail to drink the water of the divine cistern. In order to put yourself in the presence of God you will picture Him as filling the entire universe, and you will see Him in every place, like the air which we know penetrates everywhere. Sometimes, we may gaze upon God all about us, surrounding us on every hand, while we ourselves are in Him like a fish in the sea, or like the birds lost in the air. Or perhaps it may be necessary to withdraw into ourselves, into that inner chamber of our hearts, and there, with a calm and steady eye, to consider how the divine essence lives throughout our soul and fills our inner self, to think how the Father, there contemplates Himself, and how Father and Son produce the Holy Spirit.
JSJ 344
Day 9
St Francis said
I shall never stop praying God to perfect His work in you, that is, to further your excellent desire and plan to attain the fullness of Christian life, a desire which you should cherish and nurture tenderly in your heart; consider it a work of the Holy Spirit and a spark of His divine flame.
LSD 123