How to celebrate Marian novenas, Mary: Day 071

How to celebrate Marian novenas

What are some specific ways to observe a novena—nine days of special prayer—leading up to one of Our Lady’s feast days? St. Alphonsus proposes several possibilities.

Those devoted to Mary are all attention and fervor in celebrating the novenas, or nine days preceding her festivals. And the Blessed Virgin is all love in granting countless and most special graces to them. St. Gertrude one day saw, under Mary’s mantle, a band of souls on whom the great Lady was gazing with the most tender affection. She was led to understand that they were persons who, during the preceding days, had prepared themselves with various devotions for the Feast of the Assumption. Here are some devotions that can be used during the novenas before Our Lady’s feasts.

First, we can engage in interior prayer in the morning and evening, with a visit to the Blessed Sacrament, adding as well the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be nine times. Second, we can pay Mary three visits by visiting her statue or other image. Each time we are there, we can thank our Lord for the graces he granted her and ask the Blessed Virgin for some special grace.

Third, we can make many acts of love toward Mary (at least fifty or a hun- dred), and also towards Jesus. For we can do nothing that pleases her more than to love her Son, as she said to St. Bridget: “If you wish to bind yourself to me, love my Son.” Fourth, we can read every day of the novena, for a quarter of an hour, some book that talks about her glories.

Fifth, we can perform some bodily penance, such as fasting or abstaining at meals from fruit or some favorite dish; or we can chew some bitter herbs as a penance. On the vigil of the feast we can fast on bread and water. But interior penances are the best of all to practice during these novenas. —St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Glories of Mary

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .
Do I practice any of these devotions or penances during the nine days of a Marian novena? If not, are there some suggestions here I can take to heart?
CLOSING PRAYER
From a prayer of St. John of Damascus: I salute you, Mary; you are the hope of Christians. Receive the supplication of a sinner who loves you tenderly and honors you in a special way.

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