Novena for Our Nation

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DETROIT (ChurchMilitant.com) - Church Militant is calling on faithful Catholics to participate in a Novena for Our Nation.

The novena represents a special appeal to Our Lord and Our Lady, and particularly the Holy Spirit, to help President Trump and the nation through the embattled post-election season. It begins Monday, Nov. 9 at 8 a.m. ET and runs for nine successive days until Tuesday, Nov. 17. Those wishing to participate can sign in online. A livestream of the novena will available on the Church Militant website each morning.

The need to trust in the Lord, especially during this time, was made clear by Abp. Carlo Maria Viganò in a letter he penned to the American people on the evening of the election.

He urged the faithful to place their trust in God — "in this terrible hour."

"I ask you to make an act of trust in God, an act of humility and filial devotion to the Lord of Armies," the archbishop implored.

Viganò urged the faithful to pick up Our Lady's weapon, the Rosary:

I ask that all of you pray the Holy Rosary, if possible in your families or with your dear ones, your friends, your brothers and sisters, your colleagues, your fellow soldiers. Pray with the abandonment of children who know how to have recourse to their Most Holy Mother to ask her to intercede before the throne of the Divine Majesty.

The archbishop also gave advice about how to pray:

Pray with a sincere soul, with a pure heart, in the certainty of being heard and answered. Ask her — she who is the Help of Christians, Auxilium Christianorum — to defeat the forces of the Enemy; ask her — she who is terrible as an army set in battle array (Song 6:10) — to grant the victory to the forces of good and to inflict a humiliating defeat on the forces of evil.

The novena will begin with special novena prayers, a Rosary and morning Lauds. Each day it will focus on individual gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit:

• First Day: The Gift of Fear of the Lord
• Second Day: The Gift of Piety
• Third Day: The Gift of Fortitude
• Fourth Day: The Gift of Knowledge
• Fifth Day: The Gift of Understanding
• Sixth Day: The Gift of Counsel
• Seventh Day: The Gift of Wisdom
• Eighth Day: The Fruits of the Holy Spirit
• Ninth Day: The Lord & Giver of Life, the Paraclete

Church Militant will email daily prayers, including on Saturday and Sunday, to those who sign on for the novena.

Special prayers of the day will be made available on the screen as they are prayed in the Church Militant chapel as well as available in .pdf format on the website for downloading.

The practice of the novena is found in early Christianity, when the faithful prayed for nine days to implore God and the saints for special favors or to obtain special graces. Novenas have traditionally been associated with a sense of urgency and deep need. Novena is derived from the Latin novem, meaning nine.

Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Holy Cross, who died in the Auschwitz concentration camp during WWII, composed a meditation on the Holy Spirit. It includes this stanza:

Who are you, sweet Light, that fills me and illumines the darkness of my heart? You lead me like a mother's hand, and should you let go of me, I would not know how to take another step. You are the space that embraces my being and buries it in yourself. Away from you it sinks into the abyss of nothingness, from which you raised it to the light. You, nearer to me than I to myself and more interior than my most interior and still impalpable and intangible and beyond any name: Holy Spirit, eternal love!

Anyone interested in participating in the Novena for Our Nation can sign up online.

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