Hail and blessed be the hour
the not really a novena novena
November 30th is the second day of advent and the first day of the St Andrew Novena, a short prayer said 15 times a day from now until Christmas Eve. It’s called a novena even though it isn’t really a novena (a novena is a prayer said for nine days or nine hours.) Saying this prayer is an Advent tradition for many Catholics, one of many ways to prepare for the birth of Christ.
Here’s the prayer:
Hail and blessed be the hour and moment in which the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold. In that hour, vouchsafe, O my God to hear my prayer and grant my desires (mention your intentions here), through the merits of Our Savior Jesus Christ, and of His Blessed Mother. Amen.
A little about St Andrew:
A fisherman, as was his brother Simon Peter. (Peter looms so large among the apostles (for obvious reasons), along with Judas, Thomas, John, the Evangelists that it’s easy to forget Andrew and the others.)
Patron saint of Scotland, Ukraine, Romania, and Russia.
According to the Gospel of John, Andrew was the first apostle named by Jesus. In early Byzantine tradition Andrew is referred to as protokletos, “first called.”
According to reports from the 4th century, he was crucified on an X-shaped cross, a crux decussata, or saltire, at his own request, so the story goes, because he deemed himself unworthy of being crucified on the same type of cross as Christ. Legend also has it that he hung on the cross for two days before dying, preaching all the while.
His name is Greek and means manly, brave. There is no Hebrew or Aramaic name recorded for him.
With Advent upon us, we begin a season of preparation and waiting.
It’s never easy to wait, especially in this age. Our culture is a demanding one where patience isn’t really cultivated as a virtue. Deliveries arrive on our doorsteps in days, even hours. The traffic light turns green and the honking begins from other drivers to hurry up. We used to have to wait for pregnancy tests and credit card approvals, now we get them instantly. We can defrost in the microwave. Cook in the Instapot.
Some things can’t be rushed, though, like babies. As Mary prepared for the birth of her child, the Christ, so must we, making our homes and our hearts worthy. If the incarnation is real, if God truly became man and entered into time, as I believe he did, then what else could this be but absolutely terrifying and astonishing, an overwhelming event that rattles the world more than any earthquake. And what else can we do, but pray and prepare for there is no earthly way to be ready for such an event.
Here are some poems for Advent:
Advent by Donald Hall
When I see the cradle rocking
What is it that I see?
I see a rood on the hilltop
Of Calvary.
When I hear the cattle lowing
What is it that they say?
They say that shadows feasted
At Tenebrae.
When I know that the grave is empty,
Absence eviscerates me,
And I dwell in a cavernous, constant
Horror vacui.
Advent Calendar by Rowan Williams
He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.
He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.
He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.
He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.
Mosaic of the Nativity (Serbia, Winter 1993) by Jane Kenyon
On the domed ceiling God
is thinking:
I made them my joy,
and everything else I created
I made to bless them.
But see what they do!
I know their hearts
and arguments:
“We’re descended from
Cain. Evil is nothing new,
so what does it matter now
if we shell the infirmary,
and the well where the fearful
and rash alike must
come for water?”
God thinks Mary into being.
Suspended at the apogee
of the golden dome,
she curls in a brown pod,
and inside her the mind
of Christ, cloaked in blood,
lodges and begins to grow.