Sunday, January 22, 2012

Jeeves for Novenas, and Don Bosco



 This isn't the first time I've mentioned the incredible Pray More Novenas website. But I'll keep on doing so, because it is only thanks to the amazing John-Paul who started this service last year that I have actually been able to complete several novenas in the last few months. Prior to that, I'd always forget by day four or five. This was not so much due to a geriatric memory (it's been a problem all my life) but to being a piety-challenged individual. I'm just not devout enough to keep such things high on my mental to-do list. Or else I'd remember it when I was miles away from the holy card or prayer book with the novena. Then later on, back home, I'd have forgotten all about it  once again.

I'm sure you know how that is.

That's why I'm thrilled to bits with Pray More Novenas.  It's just the thing for us forgetful/lazy/scatterbrained people. Sign up for a novena and an email with the prayer pops up in your inbox every morning for nine days. Just sit there and read it right off the screen. No more hunting for the holy card!  It's like having Jeeves, the perfect English valet, glide up to you each morning with a prayer card on a silver platter and say, "Your novena, sir."

Today is day one of the novena to St. John Bosco. Start today and you'll end up on his feast day. Don Bosco ('Don' is the Italian honorific used for priests. Doesn't mean 'father'.) is one of my favorites. A (fairly) modern saint who got in lots of trouble for throwing a wrench into the industrial cabal of his time by giving  poor homeless boys free lodging and schooling. Hence, a big drop in available slave wage child labor. There were frequent attempts to assassinate him, and these were deflected miraculously. His guardian angel protected him in the form of a huge grey dog that fought off attackers.

As a child, John Bosco put on magic and acrobatic shows for which the admission price was to pray the rosary with him.

Sign up for the novena. Add to your personal intentions and end to abortion, or perhaps more specifically, for some baby who is in danger of abortion this week.