Each year the Women's Apostolate to Youth offers a Novena to the Holy Spirit in anticipation of Pentecost. In light of our 2014-2015 study of St. Catherine of Siena, this year we offer our Novena through her intercession on behalf of all priests, and in particular the priests of the Diocese of Arlington. We encourage you to join us in prayer.
May God bless our nation with an abundance of good and holy priests.
Melissa
A NOVENA FOR HOLY CHURCH
AND HER BELOVED PRIESTS
With Texts from St. Catherine of Siena’s
The Dialogue and
The Prayers of Catherine of Siena,
Trans. by Suzanne Noffke, O.P. (New York: Paulist Press)
GENERAL INTENTION: That through the intercession of the Blessed
Mother and St. Catherine of Siena, the Lord in His mercy will grant to our
beloved priests a mighty outpouring of the purifying power of the Holy Spirit for the
reform of Holy Church and the renewal of her mission to the world.
NOVENA PRAYER
Come, Holy Spirit, Overflowing Well of Living Water, and
drench the troubled hearts of our faithful priests in an endless stream of prayer. Bear them
up in this time of trial on waves of gratitude and grace.
Come, Pentecostal Flame, and sear with a burning zeal for
holiness the tepid hearts of those priests who have made peace with the world. Dissolve in the
white heat of your love every self-indulgent impulse, every hint of indifference and
every trace of complacency.
Come, Wind of Heaven, and free from the haze of confusion
those priests whose minds have been darkened by dissent or whose hearts are paralyzed by
fear of public rebuke. Grant them clarity of vision, strength of soul and the
courage they need to cherish the Gospel and speak the truth to error.
Come, Lord and Giver of Life, raise from the dead the
adulterous hearts of those priests who have sinned gravely and betrayed their Bride, Holy Church.
Remove from their eyes the grave cloth of self-justification so that they may see
the true nature of their deeds and come quickly to repentance.
Come, Comforter of the Afflicted, and heal the broken hearts
of the faithful, whose trust in their shepherds has been shattered by scandal. Bring the
healing that comes with forgiveness to those who have been injured and hope to their
embittered souls.
Come, Pillar of Cloud, and lead the shepherds of this your
flock safely through the desert of disgrace and perplexity in which they now find themselves.
Shield them from the temptation to compromise in the face of unremitting
criticism and strengthen their anguished hearts with the manna of wisdom, fidelity and
courage.
Holy Virgin Catherine, we call upon you to appeal once again
to all Heaven for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit for the reform of the clergy and the
renewal the sacred mission of Holy Church.
Mother of God, we beg you to intercede for us. With St.
Michael and all the heavenly host, wage war against the evil one who seeks so relentlessly to
destroy Holy Church by assaulting her priests, and wrest from this crisis a
blessing beyond all imagining. Amen.
DAY ONE
INTENTION: For our young and
newly-ordained priests, that they will be filled by the Holy Spirit with zeal for the mission entrusted to
them, advance quickly in virtue and be protected by the holy angels and the prayers of the faithful
from every form of worldly temptation.
Catherine prays to the Father: O
eternal Father, I remember your telling me once, when you were speaking of the ministers of holy
Church, that at another time you would talk more at length about the sins these ministers are committing
this very day. Therefore if it would please your goodness say something about this, so that I may have
reason to intensify my sorrow and compassion and restless longing for their salvation. For I
recall that you have already said that through the suffering and tears
and sorrow, the sweat and constant
prayers of your servants, you would refresh us by reforming the Church with good and holy ministers.
Therefore I make my petition so that this may grow in me.
Then God eternal looked on her with
mercy. He did not spurn her desire but accepted her petition. Wishing to fulfill this last request
that she had made because of his promises,
he said:
O dearest daughter whom I so love! I
will fulfill your desire in what you have asked of me only if you for your part will not be
foolish or indifferent. . . . Make it your concern, then, to offer prayers for all people and for the mystic body of
holy Church and for those I have given you to love with a special
love. Do not be guilty of indifference
about offering prayers and the example of your living and the word of teaching. Reprove vice and
commend virtue. Do all this to the greatest extent of your power.
[The Dialogue #108-109]
St. Catherine:
O Godhead! Godhead!
Eternal Godhead!. . . .
You are a fire always burning.
Yet, though you always consume
all that the soul possesses apart from
you,
you never consume the things that are pleasing
to you.
Burn with the fire of your Spirit
and consume,
root out from the bottom up,
every fleshly love and affection
from the hearts of the new plants
you have kindly seen fit
to set into the mystic body of holy
Church.
Transplant them
away from worldly affection,
and give them a new heart
with true knowledge of your will.
Make them despise the world
and themselves
and selfish love.
Fill them with your love’s true fervor
and make them zealous for faith and
virtue.
And so,
once they have left behind
the false desires and pretenses
of this passing world,
let them follow you alone
in purest purity and glowing charity.
(Prayer 7)
NOVENA PRAYER (see above)
DAY TWO
INTENTION: For the Catholic faithful,
that they will not lose heart in the face of scandal but will be inspired through the promptings of the
Holy Spirit to pray ever more fervently for the Holy Father, for their priests and for the success of
the mission of Holy Church.
Christ speaks to Catherine: You will
recall that I already told you I would fulfill your desire by giving
you refreshment in your labors, that I
would satisfy your anguished longings by reforming holy Church through good and holy shepherds.
I will do this, as I told you, not through war, not with the sword and violence, but through peace
and calm, through my servants’ tears and sweat. I have set you as workers in your own and your
neighbors’ souls and in the mystic body of holy Church. In yourselves you must work at virtue; in
your neighbor and in the Church you must work by example and teaching. And you must offer me
constant prayer for the Church and for every creature, giving birth to virtue through your neighbors.
. . . Never cease offering me the incense of fragrant prayers for the salvation of souls, for I want to
be merciful to the world. With your prayers and sweat and tears I will wash the face of my bride, holy
Church. [The Dialogue, #86]
St. Catherine:
To you, O heavenly doctor,
my soul’s boundless love,
I sigh mightily. . . .
I cry out to you:
wait no longer,
but through the merits of this pilot of
your ship--
St. Peter, I mean--with the fire of
charity
and the deep abyss of eternal wisdom
come to the aid of your bride
who is waiting for help. . . .
O worker of peace,
guide this ship into the port of peace
and direct your servants toward
yourself
so that the darkness may be lifted
and the dawn may appear--
the dawn which is the light
of those who have been planted in your
Church
out of pure desire for the salvation of
souls. . . .
So listen to us
as we pray for the guardian of this
chair of yours. . . .
Make your vicar whatever sort of
successor you would have him be
to your dear elder Peter,
and give him what is needed for your
Church.
I am the witness
that you have promised to grant my
desires soon;
with even more confidence then
I beg you to wait no longer
to fulfill these promises, O my God.
(Prayer 8)
NOVENA PRAYER
DAY THREE
INTENTION: That the Holy Father will
receive from the Holy Spirit the strength, courage and wisdom needed to restore confidence in
the Church and effect reforms in the priesthood.
God speaks to Catherine: O dearest
daughter, I have told you all this so that you may better know how I have dignified my ministers, and
thus grieve the more over their wickedness. If they themselves had considered their dignity, they
would not have fallen into the darkness of deadly sin nor muddied the faced of their souls. Not only have
they sinned against me and against their own dignity, but even had they given their bodies to be
burned they would not have been able to repay me for the tremendous grace and blessing they have
received, for it is impossible to have a greater dignity than theirs in this life. They are my anointed ones and I call
them my “christs,” because I have appointed them to be my ministers to you and have sent them
like fragrant flowers into the mystic body of holy Church. No angel has this dignity, but I have
given it to those men whom I have chosen to be my ministers. I have sent them like angels, and they ought
to be earthly angels in this life. [The Dialogue, #113]
St. Catherine:
I acknowledge, eternal God. . .
that you see me and know me. . . .
and I see
that you see your bride’s need
and your vicar’s good will.
But who is keeping him
from making it effective by doing
something?
In your light I have seen
that you know these things,
for nothing is hid from your eyes. . .
.
You saw too within yourself
that, even after you had freed us from
our sickness,
we would still fall into sin every day
because of our weakness.
So you gave us help for this in the
sacrament of holy penance,
where the minister pours over the soul’s
face
the blood of the humble Lamb.
Just as you saw that our chief help
lay in reconciling us to yourself
through the Word,
so also you saw all these other helps
we would need for our salvation. . . .
I beg you, then:
Since you breathe into the spirits of
your servants
eager and blazing desires
for the reform of your bride
and make them cry out with continual
prayer,
listen to their cry.
Preserve and intensify your vicar’s
good will,
and let the true perfection you require
of him
be realized in him. (Prayer 14)
NOVENA PRAYER
DAY FOUR
INTENTION: That through the power of
the Holy Spirit our priests will be strengthened in the virtue of chastity, that they will embrace
their call to be celibate and find in their vocations the fulfillment of every worthy desire.
God speaks to Catherine: I demand
purity and charity of every soul, a charity that loves me and others, and helps others in whatever
way it can, serving them in prayer and loving them tenderly. But much more do I demand purity in my
ministers, and that they love me and their neighbors, administering the body and blood of my
only-begotten Son with burning love and hunger for the salvation of souls, for the glory and
praise of my name. Just as these ministers want the
chalice in which they offer this sacrifice to be clean, so I demand that they themselves be clean in heart
and soul and mind. I want them to keep their bodies, as instruments of the soul, in perfect
purity. I do not want them feeding and wallowing in the mire of impurity, nor bloated with pride in
their hankering after high office, nor cruel to themselves and their neighbors--for they cannot abuse
themselves without abusing their neighbors. If they abuse themselves by sinning, they are abusing
the souls of their neighbors. [The Dialogue,#113]
St. Catherine:
I beg you to guide toward yourself
the heart and will of the ministers of
holy Church, your bride,
so that they may follow you,
the Slain Lamb,
poor, humble and meek,
along the way of the most holy cross--
in your way, not their own.
Let them be angelic creatures,
earthly angels in this life,
for they must administer the body and
blood
of your only-begotten Son, the spotless
Lamb.
Let them not be senseless beasts,
for beasts are irrational and are not
worthy of this.
Bring them together now
and wash them, divine compassion,
in the calm sea of your goodness,
so that they may not dawdle any longer,
losing what time they do have
for the time they do not have. (Prayer
2)
NOVENA PRAYER
DAY FIVE
INTENTION: That the Blessed Virgin Mary
will intervene in a decisive way to guide the Holy Father and the hierarchy in this time of trial
and that selfless devotion to the Immaculate Conception and to the triumph of her Immaculate Heart
will permeate the priesthood.
God speaks to Catherine: I have already
told you that I have made [Christ] a bridge for you so that all
of you would be able to reach your
goal. But in spite of all this, . . . people do not trust me, though I want nothing other than their
sanctification. It is to this end, with great love, that I give and permit everything. But they are always
scandalized in me, and I support and bear with them in great patience
because I loved them without their ever
loving me. And they are forever hounding me with great impatience and hatred, with complaining
and infidelity. They with their blinded vision want to set themselves up as investigators of my
hidden judgments, which are made justly and out of love. And they do not yet even know themselves,
so they see falsely. For those who do not know themselves do
not know me or my justice in truth.
Referring to someone who had apparently
been condemned to death by the authorities, God continues: I want you to know that I
permitted this to happen to rescue him from the sentence of eternal damnation under which he stood,
so that he might have life through his own blood in the blood of my Truth, my only-begotten Son. For
I had not forgotten the reverence and love he had for Mary, my only-begotten Son’s most gentle mother.
For my goodness, in deference to the Word, has decreed that anyone at all, just or sinner, who
holds her in due reverence will never be snatched or devoured by the infernal demon. She is like a bait set
out by my goodness to catch my creatures. So it was in mercy that I did this. (The Dialogue, #138-139]
St. Catherine:
To you, I appeal, Mary,
and to you I offer my petition
for the dear bride of Christ your most
gentle Son
and for his vicar on earth.
May he be given light
so that he may
with discernment
take the necessary steps
to reform holy Church.
May the people be united
and their heart conformed with his,
so that they may never rise up against
their head.
It seems to me, eternal God,
that you have made him an anvil,
for many people are striking him
with their tongues
and, as much as they can, with their
actions.
(Prayer 8)
NOVENA PRAYER
DAY SIX
INTENTION: That an increased fervor for
the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist, may become
the basis for an authentic reformation
of the clergy and a new evangelization of the laity.
God speaks to Catherine: I want you to
know that [my ministers] give you incomparably more than you give them, for there is no
comparison between the finite and passing things with which you help them, and myself, God, who am infinite
and have appointed them in my providence and divine charity to minister to you. With all your
material possessions you could never repay the incomparable spiritual gifts you receive--not only this
mystery, but everything whatever that is administered to you by anyone as a spiritual favor, whether
through prayer or any other means. [The Dialogue,#113]
St. Catherine:
And how, gentlest love,
do you want me to contemplate myself in
you?
You want me to contemplate your gift to
me--
your gift of creation in your image and
likeness.
In that creation,
supreme eternal purity,
you joined yourself with the mire of
our humanity.
You were driven
by the fire of your charity,
and with that same fire
you left yourself as food.
And what food is this?
Food of the angels,
supreme eternal purity!
This is why you want and demand such
purity
of the soul who receives this most
sweet sacrament--
such purity
that if it were possible for the
angelic nature
to be purified
(a nature that has no need of
purification),
such a great mystery
would demand that it be purified.
And how shall the soul be purified?
In the fire of your charity
and by washing her face
in the blood of the only-begotten Son.
O my wretched soul!
How dare you approach such a great
mystery
without purification?
(Prayer 12)
NOVENA PRAYER
DAY SEVEN
INTENTION: That the true dignity of the
priesthood will once again be recognized and restored.
God speaks to Catherine: [I]f you
should ask me why I said that this sin of those who persecute holy
Church is graver than any other sin,
and why it is my will that the sins of the clergy should not lessen
your reverence for them, this is how I
would answer you: Because the reverence you pay to them is not
actually paid to them but to me, in
virtue of the blood I have entrusted to their ministry. If this were
not so, you should pay them as much
reverence as to anyone else, and no more. It is this ministry of
theirs that dictates that you should
reverence them and come to them, not for what they are in themselves but for the power I have
entrusted to them, if you would receive the holy sacraments of the
Church. For if you refuse these when it
is in your power to have them, you would live and die condemned.
So the reverence belongs not to the
ministers, but to me. . . . And just as the reverence is done to me, so also is the irreverence. . . .
For this reason no one has excuse to say, “I am doing no harm, nor am I rebelling against holy Church. I am
simply acting against the sins of evil pastors.” Such persons are
deluded, blinded as they are by their
own selfishness. They see well enough, but they pretend not to
see so as to blunt the pricking of
conscience. If they would look, they could see that they are persecuting not these ministers, but
the blood. It is me they assault, just as it was me they reverenced.
To me redounds every assault they make
on my ministers: derision, slander, disgrace, abuse. Whatever
is done to them I count as done to me.
[The Dialogue, #116]
St. Catherine:
We blind ourselves, then,
when we put over our eyes that cloud of
cold and damp,
our selfishness.
When we do this
we know neither you
nor any true good.
We call good evil
and evil good.
And so we become ungrateful
and most ignorant.
And it is worse for us to lose the
light
once we have known the truth,
than before we had received the light.
Such false Christians are worse than
unbelievers. . . .
People such as these, my Lord,
are persecutors of the fruit of your
cross,
persecutors of your blood.
They do not follow you, Christ
crucified,
but they hound you and your blood--
especially those who rebel against your
cellarer
who holds the keys to the wine cellar
where your precious blood is stored. .
. .
They get into this rebellion
and every sort of sin
because they have lost the light of
your truth,
the light acquired through faith in
you.
(Prayer 24)
NOVENA PRAYER
DAY EIGHT
INTENTION: For those priests who have
fallen into grave sin and betrayed the grace of their ordination and the trust of their
flocks--and for those bishops who refused to call them to account--that they may truly repent and receive the
grace of conversion; and for the victims of clerical abuse, that justice will be done and the wounds
inflicted on them will be healed.
God speaks to Catherine: Now you see
how blind people are, especially these wretches [faithless
priests], because they have received
more from me and been more enlightened by Holy Scripture, they
are so much the more obligated. So they
reap more unbearable confusion. Because they knew more of
Holy Scripture in their lifetime, in
death they know more clearly how greatly they have sinned and are
allotted greater torment than others,
just as the lot of good [ministers] is more magnificent. . . .
But these wretches do not know this.
For if they had the least regard for their position they would never have come to such an evil
pass. They would have been what they should have been. But they are not. Indeed, the whole world
is corrupt, and they behave much more badly than their worldly peers. With their filthiness they
defile the face of their own souls and corrupt their subjects and suck the blood of my bride, holy Church. By
their sins they have left her pallid. The loving charity they ought to have had for this bride they
lavished on themselves, thinking of nothing but snitching her grapes one by one, taking her high
offices and lucrative positions when they should have been seeking after souls. Thus their evil lives lead
the laity (though they are not thereby excused) to irreverence and disobedience toward Holy Church. [The
Dialogue, #132]
Catherine prays to the Father: Oh, you
are a good shepherd to have given us your only-begotten Son
to be our true shepherd who in
obedience to you laid down his life for your little sheep and made of his
blood a bath for us. It is this blood
that your servants, hungry as they are, are asking for at this door.
They are asking you through this blood
to be merciful to the world and make holy Church blossom
again with the fragrant flowers of good
and holy shepherds whose perfume will dispel the stench of
the putrid evil flowers.
You said, eternal Father, that
because of your love for your creatures and through the prayers and innocent sufferings of your
servants, you would be merciful to the world and reform holy Church, and thus give us refreshment. Do not
wait any longer, then, to turn the eye of your mercy. Because it is your will to answer us before we
call, answer now with the voice of your mercy. . . . To you Eternal Father, everything is possible. [ The
Dialogue, #134]
NOVENA PRAYER
DAY NINE
INTENTION: For the grace to persevere
in prayer for our priests and to trust, never doubting, that
through the the power of the Holy
Spirit and the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the
angels and saints, the suffering
endured by the Faithful in this time of trial will be transformed into a
glorious victory for Christ and His
bride, Holy Church.
Christ speaks to Catherine: I tell you.
. . the more the mystic body of holy Church is filled with
troubles now, the more it will abound
in delight and consolation. And this shall be its delight: the reform of good holy shepherds who are
flowers of glory, who praise and glorify my name, offering me the fragrance of virtue rooted in
truth. This is the reform of the fragrant blossoming of my ministers and shepherds--not that the fruit of
this bride needs to be reformed, because it never spoils or is diminished by the sins of its
ministers. So be glad, you and your spiritual father and my other servants, in your bitterness. For I,
eternal Truth, promise to refresh you, and after your bitterness I will give you consolation along with great
suffering, in the reform of holy Church. [The Dialogue, #12]
St. Catherine:
And you,
dearest children,
since we are committed,
it is time to work for Christ’s Church,
the true mother of our faith.
So I urge you
who have already been planted in this
Church to be like pillars for her.
Let all of us together,
having cast off all selfish love and
laziness,
work for that in this garden of saving
faith
with the fervor of prayer
and with our deeds,
that we may perfectly fulfill the will
of God eternal,
who has called us to this
for our own salvation
and that of others,
and for the unity of this Church
in which is our souls’ salvation.
Amen.
(Prayer 8)
NOVENA PRAYER
