By Iliana Airey Hey guys! It’s been so long! I’ve been thinking about all of you and praying for you lots and I hope that this talk may find you all in good health and surrounded by people who love you. I wanted to talk to you about novenas. What are they? Well, they’re a form of prayer that takes 9 consecutive days to “obtain special graces, to implore special favors, or to make petitions.” What this means is it’s a prayer often to receive direction or an answer for something and/or to make specific requests. There are so many different novenas as well! When we pray a novena, we either pray the same prayer for all nine days or follow a list of prayers to be prayed for each day. Every novena is a bit different in the intention, formation of prayers, and practice. I’ve prayed a few before too! One of them was a novena to Saint Dymphna. She’s one of the patron saints of mental health issues and when I was going through a tough time and was struggling quite a bit mentally, I decided to pray this novena for 9 days. My intentions every day were asking God why I was going through all of this and, if it was His will, if He could take them away from me. I noticed shortly after that, I was starting to feel better about life in general and that I wasn’t struggling as much. A couple months after I prayed the novena, I had a friend come to me and tell me that she was going through the same things as I was. Surprisingly, I was able to give her a lot of good advice and let the Lord speak to her through me. I realized after that I can use these struggles to really help other people going through the same things and that God can work through me, if I only allow Him into my life. Soooooo….. That’s one of the cool stories I have about praying novenas! I know lots of other people who have prayed novenas too and they’ve had some pretty cool stories about them and gotten a lot of questions answered! It’s super dope. The origin of the novena prayer comes from the in-between days of the Ascension and Pentecost. Acts of the Apostles recounts, “After that they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet near Jerusalem– a mere Sabbath’s journey away. Together they devoted themselves to constant prayer” (Acts 1:12,14). Nine days later, the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles at Pentecost. Perhaps, this “nine-day period of prayer” of the apostles is the basis for the novena. (https://catholicstraightanswers.com/what-is-a-novena/) You can read more about novenas on this website! Also, if you’re looking to find a certain novena, you can go to this website: https://catholicnovenaapp.com/list-of-all-novenas/ or download the app Laudate (it has a lot of other cool prayers as well as an online Bible and daily prayers and readings!). I hoped this helped you learn a little bit about what novenas are and how you can use them in your own lives! God bless, Iliana :) You can also join us in praying the Corona Virus Novena! Link is on the home page!
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PulsePulse is our Jr High group (Grades 6-9) for those who want to be journeying to learn more about God and how He fits into this crazy thing called life! From Saint of the Day to talks to activities, we work to understand more about our faith and its importance in our everyday lives as we all work to become modern day saints. Categories
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