Novenas
Mother of Perpetual Help Novena and Mass
• 7 p.m. Wednesdays
St. Bernard’s offers three novenas, held over
nine days, per year: A Father’s Day Novena, Mother’s Day
Novena, and a All Souls Novena.
Our Mother of Perpetual Help Novena is so called
because the public novena services are held on a specified day each
week, such as Wednesday, and continue all through the year. Thus, a
novena of Wednesdays can be begun or concluded at any time during the
year.
A private novena can be undertaken by a family or
an individual at any time.
What is a novena?
The Latin word novena means “nine.”
Novenas are a form of prayer in which a person, individually or with a
group, prays for some special intention for nine days.
At some point in your life, for example, you may
have made a novena to the Holy Spirit on the nine days before Pentecost
in preparation for the feast.
Mary and the disciples of Jesus did this in the
Upper Room before God’s Spirit came upon them, even though they
didn’t call it a novena (see Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4ff).
Novenas began in the early Middle Ages in Spain and
France as a nine-day preparation before Christmas.
The number nine represents the months Jesus lived
in his mother’s womb.
