The Knitting Theologian

I am halfway through the Irresistible Novena. Yeah, I know: what’s a novena? It’s nine days of prayer. In a row. In the case of the Irresistible Novena, the prayer is the Rosary. Other novenas have other prayers associated with them.

So the Irresistible Novena, which is said to never fail (hence the name), is actually fifty-four days: six nine-day novenas in a row, for those of you following along doing the math. The way the Irresistible Novena works is you spend 27 days (three nine-day novenas) praying a rosary for your intention, and another 27 days praying a rosary in thanksgiving, whether or not your intention has been answered.

Like that little kicker? I can hear my non-Catholic friends right now; heck, I can hear my Catholic friends, and the voices are coalescing into just a few words: are you crazy? How can you give thanks if you don’t even know whether your prayers are answered? I wondered that myself.

The answer to that question is pretty simple: welcome to the Classroom of Faith, my friends. And actually I know that my prayers will be answered. I’m not sure entirely of the form in which they will be answered, but I’ve had enough experience praying to know that God always answers.

And why would I do such a thing? Because I have a couple of intentions I wanted to pray for, and the Irresistible Novena, about which I read a couple of years ago, came to mind immediately in a way that I’ve come to recognize as a nudge from the Holy Spirit. And because I recently resolved to take my fingers out of my ears and stop singing la-la-la when I sense those nudges, I went ahead and started the novena.

And so, halfway through, here I am, and I do have things for which I am grateful:

• An increased sense of God’s presence, not only during prayer but throughout the day.
• An increased recognition of the presence of God in others.
• An increased sensitivity to the graces present in the Eucharist. (I could write a whole other post on this last one, but I’ll just say here that there are many graces present in the Eucharist, and I’m sure I’m only scratching the surface of them. Trust me, they are there, and it’s the biggest reason I go to daily Mass so often. Gets me through the day like nothing else.)

I knew when I started that there was no way I could do this alone, no matter how stubborn I am. I have had to say to Jesus as well as to Mary and Joseph and practically the whole communion of saints, often, “Help! I can’t do this anymore.” They have come through, with help and support, every single time. It feels like being showered with “every spiritual blessing in the heavens.” (Ephesians 1:3) For all that, how could I not be grateful?

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at 8:45 am and is filed under Prayer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.