Good old hymn to the Holy Ghost. Great for just about every special occasion – confirmations, ordinations, baptisms, weddings, any time you pray for a blessing!
Here is my one page special sheet music: venicreator.pdf.
And here are the words:
- Veni, creator Spiritus mentes tuorum visita, imple superna gratia, quae tu creasti pectora.
Qui diceris Paraclitus, altissimi donum Dei, fons vivus, ignis, caritas et spiritalis unctio.
Tu septiformis munere, digitus paternae dexterae tu rite promissum Patris sermone ditans guttura.
Accende lumen sensibus, infunde amorem cordibus, infirma nostri corporis, virtute firmans perpeti.
Hostem repellas longius pacemque dones protinus; ductore sic te praevio vitemus omne noxium.
Per te sciamus da Patrem noscamus atque Filium, te utriusque Spiritum credamus omni tempore.
Deo Patri sit gloria, et Filio qui a mortuis Surrexit, ac Paraclito, in saeculorum saecula. Amen.
There are two popular translations that I know of. Come Holy Ghost, Creator Come – in a nice steady 86.86 rhythm and Come Holy Ghost, Creator Blest in 88.88 like the original Latin. They are both really beautiful. Both worth planting in your memory.
The Choral Public Domain Library has more information, including a link to the Catholic Encyclopedia article which gives the first part of John Dryden’s translation.
Lastly, there is another version of the Latin sung by Giovanni Vianini’s choirs. This is the one found in the Monastic Antiphonale, used by Benedictine monasteries. The story of why there are two versions of so many hymns can be read: URBAN VIII AND THE REVISION OF THE LATIN HYMNAL by Vincent A. Lenti. Basically, we had all these hymns for a thousand years or so, then in the 1500s, the humanist Pope Urban VIII thought “that the old hymns were rather tasteless and inelegant and could be improved with a reworking of the Latin texts”. The Benedictines and other groups (including the Vatican) got permission to stick with the old hymns, so that’s why they’re in the Monastic books. The rest of the Roman Rite got the humanist “improved” versions. One of the wonderful changes with the whole recent overhaul of the liturgy was undoing Pope Urban VIII’s changes and going back to the original hymns. Unfortunately, the Extraordinary Form uses 1962 books, which still have the “improved” humanist versions. So that’s what I’ve given here.
“Ambrose and Prudentius took something classical and made it Christian; the revisers and their imitators took something Christian and tried to make it classical. The result may be pedantry, and sometimes perhaps poetry; but it is not piety.” — Rev. Joseph Connelly in Hymns of the Roman Liturgy, The Newmann Press, West minster, Maryland, 1957.
God has it all fixed up in heaven.