Connections to diocese’s anniversary made at annual Novena of Grace

By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press
 
WORCESTER – The Worcester diocese’s 75th anniversary was on some people’s minds for St. John Parish’s 102nd annual Novena of Grace in honor of St. Francis Xavier.  

Bishop McManus mentioned it in his homily, a novena advertisement highlighted it and an attendee treasured an experience she had 75 years ago.

“I remember Bishop [John] Wright coming to St. John’s during the novena,” Judy Burke, director of the parish’s social committee, told The Catholic Free Press.

She said she was about 5 years old at the time. At the religious shop the parish had downstairs, she bought a statue of St. Francis Xavier and Bishop Wright blessed it for her.  

“I think that’s why I cherish it so much – because of Bishop Wright, him being the first bishop of Worcester,” she said. She displays it at home each year during the novena, then puts it in a box for safe-keeping.

On the bottom of the statue one can still see the date her mother wrote there: 3/1950.
An advertisement in The Catholic Free Press for this year’s novena said: “Celebrating the Jubilee Year and the Diocese’s 75th Anniversary as Pilgrims of Hope.”

Bishop McManus talked about these celebrations in his homily on opening day March 4. The novena, which featured several preachers and usually three Masses per day, concluded Wednesday this week.

This year the novena comes at a very important spiritual time and historic moment, Bishop McManus said. He said that during the current Jubilee Year of Hope the entire Church is reflecting upon how we are saved through the merciful love of God, a love that led Jesus to the cross.

Pope Francis desperately needs our prayers he said, noting that the Holy Father, who has been suffering respiratory issues, gave this Jubilee Year the theme Pilgrims of Hope.

Bishop McManus also mentioned the Worcester diocese celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, and noted that the St. Francis Xavier Novena was already taking place 27 years before the diocese was erected. He said it is a great testament that people still come.

“You are people of faith; you are pilgrim people,” he said, noting how pilgrims travel to a particular place and how novena-goers come to St. John’s, turning to God and St. Francis Xavier.

Bishop McManus told of being on pilgrimage in Lourdes, where he was asked to lead a procession that included sick people. He carried a candle like others did. Looking over the crowd, he saw thousands of candles being raised aloft.

“Night has dispelled,” he thought. The pilgrims’ faith was deeply rooted in the theological virtue of hope; they had come with hope, rooted in faith, that God would answer their prayers for a spiritual or physical healing.

“That is what we do in this church,” Bishop McManus told novena-goers at St. John’s. “We are becoming pilgrims of hope,” rooted in faith.  

He called for praying for spiritual renewal in our hearts, families and country, and spoke of Christ someday bringing us to a place in his Father’s house.