The period between Ascension Thursday and the Pentecost marks an extraordinary span of time. Luke depicts the early followers of Christ as processing the departure of the Lord, “taken up to heaven” (Lk 24:51), after “a cloud took him from their sight” (Ac 1:9). This happened after he had been appearing to them for “forty days” after the resurrection. We thus commemorate the Ascension on the fortieth day after Easter. And the Pentecost we celebrate on the fiftieth day, continuing the preexisting chronology of Jewish feasts, with the Pentecost Festival of Weeks celebrated seven weeks after the Passover festival. For the intervening days, Jesus directed his disciples “not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for “the promise of the Father,” telling them that “in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Ac 1:4-5). This attitude of waiting and preparing, recalling Advent and Lent while in the joy and peace of Easter, sets the attitude and posture of the novena we now anticipate. From Friday, May 14 until Saturday, May 22, we therefore recall these experiences and these prayers, and joyfully await the renewal of this “baptism with the Holy Spirit.” We encourage you to consider this ancient devotion, this first of novenas, to consider integrating its prayers into these upcoming days. Such a devotion can be said before Mass or Vespers, incorporated into lectio divina, or prayed independently.