Bishop Patrick invites the whole Diocese to pray a Novena to the Holy Spirit, from Ascension Thursday to Pentecost Sunday.
From Ascension Thursday to the day of Pentecost, the Diocese of Nottingham is being invited to do something very simple: to pray, together, as one diocesan family. Every parish, every chaplaincy, every school, every Religious community, every household, every housebound parishioner and every retired priest. One diocese, nine days, united prayer.
A novena is simply nine days of prayer for a particular intention. It is one of the oldest patterns of prayer in the Church. Its roots are in the very first novena, prayed by the apostles and Mary in the Upper Room as they waited for the Holy Spirit. Two thousand years on, we are being invited to wait and pray in the same way, asking the Holy Spirit to breathe afresh through the life of our diocese.
You can pray this novena on your phone on the bus, kneeling beside your bed, in the chapel after Mass, or with your family before supper. It takes only a few minutes a day. There are three ways to join in, pick whichever suits you best.
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Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
Across our diocese, in homes and hospitals, in schools and shops, on building sites and university campuses, in the quiet of an empty church before the morning Mass, there are people praying. Some have prayed every day of their lives. Some are praying for the first time in years. Some are still wondering whether anyone is listening.
Over the next nine days, I would like to invite all of us to do something extraordinarily simple. From Ascension Thursday to the day of Pentecost, I am inviting the whole Diocese of Nottingham- every parish, every chaplaincy, every school, every Religious community, every household, every housebound parishioner and every retired priest- to join together in praying a Novena to the Holy Spirit.
One diocese, nine days, united prayer.
A novena is one of the oldest forms of prayer in the Church. The very first novena was prayed by the apostles in the Upper Room with Mary, after the Lord had ascended to heaven and before the Holy Spirit came upon them. They were afraid. They felt unequipped. They did not know or understand what was being asked of them. So, they waited, and they prayed. Then on the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit came down upon them, and they were utterly transformed.
This year I want to invite you to wait and pray, as one diocesan family, just as the first apostles did ahead of Pentecost. Not because we are afraid, but because, like those first disciples, we know that we cannot do this alone.
Our five-year Mission Plan, Go, Make Disciples, asks us to place three spiritual themes- encounter, discipleship and mission - at the heart of all we do. However, the Plan is just as clear that these themes are not something we can engineer by our own strength. They are enabled by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and the spiritual nourishment of the Eucharist. The Holy Spirit, as I have written before, is the one who makes mission possible. He is the one who opens our eyes and our hearts; the one who turns hesitant disciples into joyful witnesses; the one who takes the little we feel we have to offer and makes it ever more fruitful in the Lord's service.
The renewal we long for - a Church that is evermore outward-looking, more missionary and more confident in speaking humbly of Christ - is, first and foremost, the Lord's work in us and through us. Our part is to open our hearts to Him and His Holy Spirit, and to choose, day by day, to cooperate with Him.
Each day of this novena names something specific to bring before the Holy Spirit: our diocese, our priests and deacons, our schools and young people, those who have drifted from the Church, the housebound, our religious, our families, my own ministry as your Bishop.
Each day offers a passage of Scripture, a short reflection, and a prayer. You can pray the novena on your phone on the bus, kneeling beside your bed, in the chapel after Mass, or with your family before supper. The whole thing takes just a few minutes to pray and you can adapt it to your own circumstances and life. Even a quick simple whisper of "Come, Holy Spirit" each day will contribute significantly to the great chorus of prayer I hope will rise up across the Diocese in these days.
You may have prayed many novenas in your life, or you may have never prayed one before. Either way, you are most welcome to join us in prayer in these days. If this is familiar territory, please offer this novena for the intentions of our diocese. If it is new, simply begin; the Holy Spirit will guide you, as He guided those first apostles in the Upper Room.
My particular thanks to our Religious communities, to our retired clergy, and to our housebound brothers and sisters. The Mission Plan is clear that the active life of our parishes, chaplaincies and schools is supported by your prayers. You are not on the receiving end of this novena. You are at its very heart. The work the rest of us hope to do over these next five years rests on the prayer you already offer, often hidden, always essential.
So please join me in waiting on the Lord. Please join me in asking the Holy Spirit to fill our sails: to inspire us, to guide us, and to send us out, so that together we may go, and make disciples.
With prayer and good wishes,
✠ Patrick
Bishop of Nottingham
Each day follows the same simple pattern. Begin with the Opening Prayer below. Then read the day's Scripture, sit with the short reflection, pray the day's intentions, and close with the prayer that we will all be saying together across the diocese. The whole thing takes only a few minutes. Pray it however and wherever you can.
This prayer can be said at the start of each of the nine days, before the day's Scripture and reflection.
Holy Spirit,
You came upon the apostles in the Upper Room and made them bold.
You took their fear and turned it into mission.
You took their hesitancy and turned it into witness.
Come now, once more, in these nine days, to our Diocese of Nottingham.
Inspire and enable us to make encounter, discipleship and mission the foundation of all we do: not as a programme of our own making, but as the Lord's work in us, nourished by the Eucharist and brought to life by your breath.
Breathe through our parishes and our schools, our chaplaincies and our homes, our hospitals and our prisons, our villages, towns and cities.
Find every heart that is willing and unfurl its sails.
Make us, like the first disciples, faith-filled, joyful and outward-looking missionary disciples: offering the little we have and trusting You will make it fruitful.
Amen.
Friday 15 May · Easter Feria
For our diocese.
For every parish, chaplaincy, school and home across our five counties.
Acts 1:12–14
"Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day's journey away; and when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying… All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus."
The Diocese of Nottingham covers Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Rutland and Lincolnshire. Cathedral cities and former mining villages, Lincolnshire fenland and Peak District hills, market towns and university campuses. It is a place. It is also a people: clergy and Religious, parishioners and parents, teachers and students, those who arrive at Mass on time and those who slip in at the back, those who would not yet call themselves believers but who are paying attention.
Today, on the first day of our novena, we lift up every part of our Diocese. Our five-year Mission Plan, Go, Make Disciples, asks us to place three spiritual themes at the heart of all we do - encounter, discipleship and mission - and reminds us that none of these is something we can engineer by our own strength. They are inspired and enabled by the Holy Spirit and nourished by the Eucharist.
The first disciples did not yet know what kind of Church they would become. They returned to the Upper Room together and they prayed, with one accord. That is all we are asked to do today.
Together, with one accord, we begin.
For our diocese: for every priest, deacon, Religious, parishioner, child, young person, parent, grandparent, seeker, doubter, returner.
For the cities, towns and villages of our five counties, that they would be places where Christ is known and loved, and our parishes be places of welcome and invitation.
And for an openness, in each of us, to the Holy Spirit who has been given to us in baptism: the Spirit who makes encounter, discipleship and mission possible.
Come, Holy Spirit. Unfurl our sails.
Make us faith-filled, joyful and outward-looking missionary disciples for the renewal of our diocese, and the life of the world.
Amen.
Saturday 16 May · Easter Feria
For our priests and deacons.
For those whom Christ has called to serve us, and to lead us in mission.
John 21:15–17
"Simon, son of John, do you love me?… Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you. Jesus said to him, Feed my sheep."
Before Peter is asked to lead, he is asked whether he loves Jesus. The order matters. Our Mission Plan asks the same of every priest and deacon in our diocese: that they would know that they are personally loved by God and continually invited into an ever more personal relationship with the Lord, before they are needed by anyone else. Their ministry, the Mission Plan reminds us, is to flow from this encounter and to be sustained by openness to the inspiration, guidance and empowerment of the Holy Spirit.
Our priests and deacons carry a great deal. They preside at the altar, sit by hospital beds, listen in confession, bury the dead, baptise the newborn, and somewhere in between try to keep the parish accounts in order. The Plan is clear that we want a future where they spend less time on administration and more on the work that only they can do: the sacraments, pastoral care, prayer, the enabling of mission. None of this is possible in their own strength. They need our prayer.
Today we pray, not first for what they do, but for who they are. That, like Peter on the lakeshore, they would hear the question before the commission. That they would know that they are loved.
For every priest and deacon serving in our diocese: those near retirement and those newly ordained, those flourishing and those weary, that they would be supported and freed up as leaders and enablers of mission.
For those discerning a call to priesthood or the diaconate, that they would have the courage to say yes.
For our seminarians, our retired priests, and all who pray daily for vocations.
Come, Holy Spirit. Unfurl our sails.
Make us faith-filled, joyful and outward-looking missionary disciples for the renewal of our diocese, and the life of the world.
Amen.
Cf. In the Mission Plan: see Priority 3 — Equip and support our clergy as leaders and enablers of mission.
Sunday 17 May · Seventh Sunday of Easter · World Communications Day
For all who tell the story of the Church.
For every person who, in word or image, helps the Gospel travel.
Romans 10:14–15
"How are they to call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?… As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"
Today the universal Church marks World Communications Day and, providentially, it lands inside our novena. Saint Paul's questions in Romans are not rhetorical; they are practical. If no one tells the story, no one hears it. If no one hears it, no one believes. The Gospel travels on the lips and the lives of those who pass it on.
Our Mission Plan asks every baptised person to grow in confidence to speak humbly of the difference that knowing Christ makes to our lives. That confidence is itself a gift of the Holy Spirit: the same Spirit who turned hesitant disciples in the Upper Room into witnesses able to be understood in every language under heaven.
In our diocese the storytellers are everywhere. They are the parishioners who write the parish bulletin, the volunteers who keep a website running, the young people who post a moment from a youth retreat, the catechists who speak about Jesus in plain English on a Wednesday evening. They are the new Diocesan Digital Missionaries, committed to translating the themes of encounter, discipleship and mission into the digital spaces where their neighbours already gather. They are the parents who answer their children's questions about God honestly.
Today we pray for every one of them and for the courage we will all need to keep telling the story of salvation, the good news.
For every storyteller in our diocese: communicators, journalists, designers, photographers, parish secretaries, catechists, teachers, parents.
For our Diocesan Digital Missionaries, that the Holy Spirit would guide their work and draw others toward Christ.
And for the courage, in each of us, to speak humbly and joyfully of the difference that knowing Christ makes to our lives.
Come, Holy Spirit. Unfurl our sails.
Make us faith-filled, joyful and outward-looking missionary disciples for the renewal of our diocese, and the life of the world.
Amen.
Monday 18 May · Easter Feria
For our schools, chaplains, and young people in education.
For every Catholic school in our diocese, and every child whose first encounter with Christ may happen there.
Mark 10:13–14
"And they were bringing children to him, that he might touch them; and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it he was indignant, and said to them, Let the children come to me, do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God."
For many children in our diocese, the Catholic school is a privileged place where they meet Christ. Not just at the altar but in a Year 4 classroom where a teacher takes a question seriously, in an assembly where a Lay Chaplain prays for someone's grandparent, in a quiet act of kindness in the corridor when no one is watching.
Our Mission Plan is plain about this: our schools are places of encounter in their own right. Their work is to help children and young people discover that they are loved by God, they are called by name, they are invited to grow as His disciples who recognise the interconnectedness between the Eucharist, prayer and how they treat one another. The Diocesan Mission Plan asks for a deeper bond between school and parish, and for schools where Catholic life and mission are visibly alive.
Today we pray for everyone who shares in this important work: headteachers, teachers, lay chaplains, kitchen staff, governors, teaching assistants, parents and priests. And we pray for the children and young people themselves: that the Holy Spirit would meet them where they are, and that their schools would be places where Christ is known and loved.
For every Catholic school in the Diocese of Nottingham, and every child and young person within it.
For our Lay Chaplains, headteachers, teachers and governors, that they would build schools of encounter, discipleship and mission.
And for the priests who serve our schools, that the bond between parish and school would deepen.
Come, Holy Spirit. Unfurl our sails.
Make us faith-filled, joyful and outward-looking missionary disciples for the renewal of our diocese, and the life of the world.
Amen.
Cf. In the Mission Plan: see Priority 1 — practical steps in our schools and chaplaincies.
Tuesday 19 May · Easter Feria
For our Youth Service and Young Adults.
For the young people and young adults of our diocese, and those who walk alongside them.
1 Timothy 4:12
"Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity."
Across the diocese, in chaplaincies and youth groups, in university Catholic societies and Area Young Adult gatherings, and on pilgrimages, there are young people asking honest questions about God and quietly trying to figure out what the meaning and purpose of their life is. Our Diocesan Mission Plan is clear about who they are: not a problem to be solved or a demographic to be reached, but young members of the Church now, whose gifts are needed and whose voices need to shape what the diocese is becoming.
The Diocesan Youth Service and Young Adult Ministry Lead exists to walk with them and with the parishes that serve them. It is unglamorous, often invisible work: sitting on the floor at a retreat, returning the hundredth message about a confirmation date, opening a building on a Friday night so that a small group of teens can sit together and pray.
Today we pray for them: the young people themselves, and the people whose vocation is to make space for them. We pray for the Diocesan Youth Forum that the Plan promises by Summer 2026, that it would be a place of genuine listening, where young voices help shape the renewal of the diocese. And we ask the Holy Spirit to give them courage to be missionaries to their peers, in the spaces where their friends already are, online and offline.
For every young person in our diocese: the ones at Mass and the ones who haven't been in years; the searching, the certain, and the somewhere in between.
For the Diocesan Youth Service, university chaplains, the Diocesan Young Adult Ministry Lead and all who volunteer to serve young people in our diocese: that they would be unafraid of what young people are actually asking, and would offer them concrete paths of encounter, discipleship and mission.
And for the courage of young Catholics to live their faith in their schools, colleges, universities, workplaces, online and offline.
Come, Holy Spirit. Unfurl our sails.
Make us faith-filled, joyful and outward-looking missionary disciples for the renewal of our diocese, and the life of the world.
Amen.
Cf. In the Mission Plan: see Priority 1 — practical steps for young adults and university chaplaincies; and Priority 4 — the Diocesan Youth Forum.
Wednesday 20 May · Easter Feria
For the housebound, the sick, our retired clergy and Religious.
For those whose prayers carry our diocese.
Colossians 1:24
"Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church."
Our Mission Plan says something we should not overlook: the renewal of our diocese depends on the active participation of all the baptised and it is supported by the prayers of the Religious, the housebound and the retired clergy.
Supported by. Held up by. Made possible by.
If you are praying this novena from a hospital bed, from a care home room, from your own front room because you can no longer get to the church you have loved your whole life, please know that you are at the very heart of the Diocesan Mission Plan. The Church here in the East Midlands, the Diocese of Nottingham, is leaning on your prayer in these nine days and, indeed, in every day of your life. The Plan's three themes - encounter, discipleship and mission - are enabled by the Holy Spirit and nourished by the Eucharist, and your prayer is part of how that enabling actually happens. Saint Paul's words to the Colossians belong to you in a particular way.
And to our Religious communities, scattered through the diocese in your monasteries and convents and houses: your daily office, your adoration, your Masses, are part of the engine of what God is doing here. We see you. We thank God for you. We need you.
For every housebound and sick person in our diocese: that they would know themselves loved and indispensable to the Church's mission.
For our Religious communities and our retired clergy: that the Holy Spirit would continue to make their prayer fruitful far beyond their seeing.
And for those who carry illness, grief, anxiety or loneliness today, that the Spirit would comfort and console them.
Come, Holy Spirit. Unfurl our sails.
Make us faith-filled, joyful and outward-looking missionary disciples for the renewal of our diocese, and the life of the world.
Amen.
Thursday 21 May · Easter Feria
For those who have drifted from the Church, and those who have never known Christ.
For the missionary edge of our diocese, for every person Christ longs to reach through us.
Luke 15:4–6
"What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it?… And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbours, saying to them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost."
Most of us know someone who has drifted from the Church or has never known Christ. A sibling who used to come to Mass and stopped. A child who grew up and grew away. A friend who was baptised and confirmed and would now describe themselves, gently, as having no faith. Or someone we work with, live next to, see every week, who has never had any real reason to think about Christ at all.
Our Mission Plan is honest about how hard this is. Most of us, it acknowledges, do not find it easy to speak of our faith. We do not like to stand out. We feel a little unsure of what to say. So, we say nothing, and the door stays closed. The Plan's answer is not to manufacture confidence by willpower, but to ask the Holy Spirit to make us faith-filled, joyful and outward-looking missionary disciples whose lives bear witness before our words do, and whose words come, when they come, from a place of love rather than performance.
Today, we ask the Spirit to do what we cannot. We pray for every person we have stopped praying for. We pray for the people whose names we know and the people whose names only God knows.
And we ask, quietly, for the courage to be ready when the door opens.
For everyone, by name, who we know has drifted from the Church.
For those who have never been told, in language they could hear, that God loves them.
And for the courage to invite, to listen, to speak humbly of Christ and to be the kind of welcoming, invitational parishes where someone who walks back through the door knows they are home.
Come, Holy Spirit. Unfurl our sails.
Make us faith-filled, joyful and outward-looking missionary disciples for the renewal of our diocese, and the life of the world.
Amen.
Cf. In the Mission Plan: see Priority 1 — Mission, nurturing witness of life.
Friday 22 May · Easter Feria
For our families and marriages.
For the domestic church, for every family where faith is first met or first lost.
Joshua 24:15
"And if you be unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve… but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."
Long before a child meets Christ in a school assembly or a parish, they meet Him - or they don't - at their home. In the way a parent argues, forgives, prays, says grace before supper, sits up with a teenager at midnight, gets out of bed for Mass on a wet Sunday morning. The home is where most of us either learn that faith is real and foundational or learn that it is decorative or an add-on.
Our Mission Plan recognises the family as the first place of encounter, discipleship and mission: the domestic church where the three themes are first lived. Marriage and family life is both a joy and challenge, for everyone, in every age. There are tired marriages, marriages under strain, families estranged from one another, single parents carrying alone what was meant for two, adult children watching elderly parents fade. None of this disqualifies a household from the call to holiness. The ups and the downs are all the raw material for growth in holiness, and the Holy Spirit is the one who turns it into grace.
Today we pray for the families of our diocese: the ones flourishing, the ones struggling, the ones in pieces, and the new ones just starting out. We pray for engaged couples, newlyweds, those celebrating fifty years. We pray for parents whose children have stopped coming to Mass, and for grandparents quietly handing on the faith their own children did not.
For every family and household in our diocese, that they would be true domestic churches of encounter, discipleship and mission.
For marriages: those flourishing, those tired, those struggling, and for those preparing to marry: that their hope would be met with grace.
And for parents, godparents and grandparents: that their love would be a window onto the love of God.
Come, Holy Spirit. Unfurl our sails.
Make us faith-filled, joyful and outward-looking missionary disciples for the renewal of our diocese, and the life of the world.
Amen.
Saturday 23 May · Vigil of Pentecost
For our Bishop, and for the renewal of our diocese.
For Bishop Patrick, and the work the Holy Spirit is doing among us.
Acts 2:1–4
"When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting… And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit."
Tonight is the vigil. Our novena finishes. This evening and tomorrow, the readings of Pentecost will be proclaimed and we will hear, once more, the great story of Pentecost.
On this last day we pray for our Bishop. Bishop Patrick is the shepherd the Lord has given our diocese for this moment and time. The Bishop has set before us a five-year Mission Plan that is quietly confident about what God is asking of us: that we would not manage decline but reshape ourselves and our institutions for renewal, growth and mission; that encounter, discipleship and mission would become the living foundations of every parish, school and chaplaincy; and that all of it would be inspired by the Holy Spirit and nourished by the Eucharist.
Pray for Bishop Patrick by name today: for his health, his prayer life, his courage; for the burdens he carries and the joy he is given; for the words he will need to say in the years ahead, and the silences he will need to keep. He has asked us to pray for him. Today let us do so.
And we pray for the diocese he serves. Not only for the diocese as it is in this moment, but for the diocese God is calling it to become. A Church that is more outward-looking, more missionary, more confident in speaking humbly of Christ. A Church where the Holy Spirit is at work and on the move. A Church where, by the grace of God and the cooperation of every baptised heart, the wind has filled the sails.
Tomorrow morning, we recall how the Spirit descended in the Upper Room, and we implore Him to descend, once more, upon our Diocese. Tonight, we wait - together, in one place, with one accord, with Mary and the apostles in the Upper Room of our diocese - and we pray.
For Bishop Patrick: for his health, his prayer, his ministry, and the courage God will continue to ask of him.
For the renewal of our diocese: that we would become a Church visibly alive in the Spirit; faith-filled, joyful, outward-looking, missionary disciples.
And for an openness, in each of us tomorrow morning and every day, to the wind that will fill our sails.
Come, Holy Spirit. Unfurl our sails.
Make us faith-filled, joyful and outward-looking missionary disciples for the renewal of our diocese, and the life of the world.
Amen.
If you have read this far, you are already part of the chorus of prayer rising across the Diocese of Nottingham in these nine days. Thank you for joining us.
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