Pentecost Novena 2026

Pentecost Novena 2026

15 – 23 May 2026

(Cover image: Our Lady of Good Deliverance, before whom Poullart des Places and his companions founded the Congregation on Pentecost Day in 1703.)

Pentecost stands at the beating heart of our spirituality: the moment when the Church is born and sent forth in the power of the Spirit; the moment when Claude Poullart des Places entrusted his small community to the Holy Spirit, allowing our religious family to come into being through the very breath of God; and the moment in which Francis Libermann discovers the deepest truth of his vocation.

Contemplating this founding mystery, we hear an invitation to renew the commitments of our own baptism and to rekindle the essential sources of our spirituality.

In this Jubilee Year of the bicentenary of baptism and conversion of Francis Libermann, as we approach the conclusion of the second phase of the General Council’s Plan for Animation on Spiritan spirituality, this Pentecost novena gathers and echoes the key themes that have nourished our journey over the past two years. It is offered to us as a call to spiritual renewal, both personal and communal: a call to return to what is essential, to allow the Spirit to rekindle within us the fire of our origins, and to draw from the legacy of our Founders for the mission entrusted to us today.

These themes are not simply one set among many; they form the backbone of our identity. They continue to shape the way we live as Spiritan religious and missionaries, in service to the poorest and most forgotten.

This novena seeks to help us welcome the Spirit’s work of renewing the grace of our vocation. May it become for each of us a time of visitation: may the Spirit surprise us, console us, send us forth, and fashion us — even today — into Spiritans after God’s own heart.

Our gratitude goes to Frs. Crispin MBUMBA and Damien MEKI, of the Generalate in Rome, who have prepared and offered this novena to us.