Hail, and blessed be the hour and moment at which the Son of God was born of a most pure Virgin in a stable at midnight in Bethlehem in the piercing cold. At that hour, vouchsafe, I beseech Thee, to hear my prayers and grant my desires (mention your intentions here). Through Jesus Christ and His Most Blessed Mother.
You pray this prayer fifteen times a day, from today, which is Saint Andrew's feast (and happy name-day to all the Andrews I know) through December 24.
Pentimento asks that anyone with prayer intentions or needs for which she can offer the novena please leave them in her combox. I'll offer the same -- if nothing else, having your needs to pray for will make me remember to pray the novena at all. I'm very good at starting novenas, not so good at keeping them up. But as she says, it would be a privilege to join my prayers with yours, friends in real life and friends unmet, except in the hiddenness of cyberspace.
ADDENDUM: I happily typed out the directions for praying this novena without considering, until I went to start it this morning, exactly how one prayed it fifteen times. I think I must have had this hazy idea of a wacked-out-on-overdrive Liturgy-of-Many-Hours type of thing. What a relief to discover that, no, you can just sit down and pray it fifteen times all at once. I feel like an idiot, but then again, I'm just as happy this way.
I will say, too, that anyone praying this novena with me could pray for the following intentions:
continued strength and hope for a couple of friends who bear overwhelming family burdens with grace and good cheer
for two friends undergoing cancer treatment right now
for several other friends struggling through the early stages of bereavement and for the souls of their beloved dead
for my eldest daughter as she wades through heaps of college admissions material and thinks about the coming years (and the rest of her life)
for several friends trying to discern their vocations through the babel that is graduate school
for greater love of God, contrition for sin, and perseverance in hope
Again, please feel free to add your petitions.
11 comments:
Will you pray for mine, as mentioned in the post you linked to? I'll do yours.
Indeed. Are you really managing fifteen times a day? I have trouble remembering to pray a novena once a day for nine days straight, but I think I've prayed this one about three times already since I got up this morning . . . That's not counting all the times I thought, "Oh -- that prayer! I can't remember exactly how it goes. Good thing You remember, Lord . . . "
That should read, "Indeed I will," not just "Indeed," which sounds Jeeves-ish. I should be so lucky as to be the Jeeves of prayer.
You just have to do them all at once.
"undox"
AMDG
OK, I'm a dork. That possibility never occurred to me. I avoid novenas generally, because of my non-follow-through-with-it-ness, so I miss a lot of the finer points, I guess.
The Jeeves of Prayer. That is SO BRILLIANT. Please, please, write a post on that theme, Sally!
I'm only up to five so far. But here's how I do it. I have the prayer printed out on a slip of paper, with the intentions I'm praying for, and I shift it from page to page of my page-per-day appointment book every day. If I've left off in the middle, I write down the time I stopped and the number at which I stopped. And then I finish later. It CAN be done this way; I've done it before.
My word verification is "mistak." The Jeeves of Prayer would never mak a mistak.
Hi Sally, I left an intention at Pentimento's, but here's another: for my friend who is dying from cancer and for her family. I'm going to try to keep up with the novena, too, but my weakness is not with saying the prayer 15 times, but with remembering to say it at all on, say, day 5.
I am so with you. That big red reminder link at the top of the sidebar is not there for other people's edification.
I would love to join in -- my intention being, among other things, the defeat of the UK government's home education proposals.
And I will also include your and everyone else's intentions.
I love the reminder link. I want to figure out how to do that on my blog, because I could use it too.
It's very easy. Just click your "customize" button at the top, which gives you your layout. At the top of the sidebar, click the "Add a Gadget" button, and choose "Link List." Paste in a link to your novena post with whatever text you want (like, "Prayed your novena today?") and add it.
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