Parishes host popular novenas

By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press

St. Cecilia Parish in Leominster replaced its parish festival with a novena in honor of its patroness this fall. 

At St. Stephen Parish in Worcester, where parishioners were hungry for novenas, a novena to Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal has started up. 

And St. Mary Parish in Shrewsbury just concluded this year’s Novena to Our Lady Undoer of Knots that the pope and parishioners helped initiate. 

Novenas, with prayers focused on a particular saint, are often held for nine days or weekly for nine weeks. 

This year, because of coronavirus restrictions, St. Cecilia’s couldn’t have its traditional festival for the feast of its patroness Nov. 22. But Father Mateus Souza, associate pastor, who is in charge of pastoral ministry at the parish, figured that it would be appropriate to focus more on the religious aspect of the feast day anyway. 

“And also, St. Cecilia has a special place in my heart,” he said. “Even though I’m not a musician … I didn’t go to school for that ... I sing.” He wanted to celebrate St. Cecilia as patroness of music. And, he said, “we have such a beautiful organ.” Whenever St. Cecilia is mentioned at this parish, people remember the organ music, he said. 

Choirs are fading away because of the virus, he said. So he wanted to combine a novena with a choir festival, having a different group sing each night. But virus restrictions prevented that.  

So the parish held just the novena to St. Cecilia, from Nov. 14-22, with talks by different speakers about themes from a Litany of St. Cecilia.  

One theme was “St. Cecilia, who by your pleading moved the hearts of pagans and brought them into the true Church.”  Father Stephen E. Lundrigan, pastor of Annunciation Parish in Gardner, preached about this second-century martyr persuading her husband to be baptized and also helping other people to see the truth.  

Another night the novena brought back a tradition – a Mass in French – to celebrate the parish’s French-Canadian culture and pray for the founders, and bring in the elderly who still speak French, Father Souza said.  

Even people who don’t speak French came; they’re very proud of their heritage, he said. The celebrant was a son of the parish, Father Donald C. Ouellette, now associate pastor of St. John the Baptist Parish in East Brookfield and St. Joseph Parish in North Brookfield. 

 About 80 people attended the novena each day, including many from other parishes, and the Sunday Mass with Bishop McManus was especially well attended, Father Souza said.

Miraculous Medal 

The number of novena attendees at St. Stephen Parish is growing, according to Kathleen Foley, chairwoman of the parish council. 

When Father Stephen M. LaBaire was pastor, he asked “if we wanted to bring back” things from the past, or do new things that would bring a sense of community, she said.  

“They could be religious or secular” things, she said. “We all really wanted a novena.” 

So three years ago they started a weekly Miraculous Medal Novena, she said. This year’s began on Sept. 30 and ended on Nov. 25.  

The story of the Medal of the Immaculate Conception, known as the Miraculous Medal, dates back to 1830 in Paris, France, says the website of the Marians of the Immaculate Conception, www.marian.org. Catherine Laboure, a novice with the Daughters of Charity, had a vision of the Blessed Mother, who asked her to “have a medal struck upon this model,” the model revealed in the vision. Mary said, “Those who wear it will receive great graces.” The medal was made and the devotion spread rapidly.  

“Years ago we had novenas,” Ms. Foley said. “I don’t remember the Miraculous Medal novena,” but that doesn’t mean St. Stephen’s didn’t have one.  

She said her family had recently been attending the novena to St. Joseph, Jesus’ foster father, at Christ the King Parish in Worcester, and she saw some other St. Stephen’s parishioners there. 

“Once St. Stephen’s started the novena for the Miraculous Medal, then we also went to that novena,” she said. 

The first year, Father LaBaire was the only speaker, and about 15 people attended, she said.  

When Msgr. Robert K. Johnson became pastor two years ago, he asked if parishioners wanted to continue the novena, and they did, she said. She said he brought in more speakers, word spread, and the number of attendees grew to about 30 this year. 

“This year it seemed even bigger than last year,” she said. She said Msgr. Johnson is good about publicizing it, and that he included exposition of the Blessed Sacrament in it, which the parish had at other times in the past.  

Both he and Father LaBaire included veneration of a relic of St. Catherine Laboure, she said. But this year, because of the coronavirus, they did not do the veneration, during which participants kiss the relic.

Our Lady Undoer of Knots 

At St. Mary Parish “there were some people who were praying … to Our Lady Undoer of Knots,” said Msgr. Michael F. Rose, pastor. So about five years ago the parish incorporated the novena prayers and the rosary into its eucharistic adoration time period, he said.  

St. Mary’s holds the novena weekly from around the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary Oct. 7 to the Feast of the Immaculate Conception Dec. 8. 

“It’s basically handing over the knots in our lives” to the Blessed Mother to untangle, Msgr. Rose explained. The image the parish displays shows a knotted ribbon that becomes untangled after passing through Mary’s hands. 

The popularity of the novena began after Pope Francis, who before he was pope, saw this painting in Germany and brought the devotion associated with it back to Argentina, Msgr. Rose said. After he became pope, the devotion captured the attention of the wider Church.