Holy Ghost, inspire us with horror of sin.
Our culture often has a dismissive attitude toward sin or, worse yet, a tolerance for or even acceptance of sin. People laugh about it or brush it off as no big deal. Yet here we ask the Holy Spirit to inspire us with a horror of sin.
We should be horrified. Sin is the worst thing that can possibly happen to us because it weakens or even breaks our relationship with God. When we sin, we tell God that there is something more important to us than He is, that we know better than He does what we need, and that we just are not going to obey Him. And who are we to say such things? It should horrify us that we do every time we sin.
Holy Ghost, come and renew the face of the earth.
This petition recognizes that we need the Holy Spirit to renew us and all creation at every moment. We so easily fall. We get discouraged. We sin. We slide away from the right path. We grow dark and depressed. We lose track of who we are and what God has called us to be. So we need the Holy Spirit to renew His life-giving, energizing, healing presence within us all the time.
We can also pray this line looking ahead to the end of time when God will renew all things in a definitive, final way. When Jesus returns, He will bring with Him a new Heaven and a new earth. We will rise up in the general resurrection and enter into a whole new realm of existence that we cannot even imagine now. It should make us excited and eager. Are we?
Holy Ghost, shed Thy light in our souls.
The Holy Spirit enlightens us with knowledge, understanding, counsel, wisdom, fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord. He illuminates us with divine love. He makes us shine brightly before the world like lamps that do not cower under bushel baskets but glow from a lamp stand or like a city on a hill, offering God’s light to everyone we encounter (see Matthew 5:14-15).
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