Word: novenae
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Manila still impresses a visitor as an intensely Catholic and traditional city. It must be one of the few places in the world since the end of the Second Vatican Council where a Wednesday night novena can snarl traffic for miles around. The ramshackle old houses in the central city still contrast as sharply as ever with the gleaming villas in the new suburb of Makati, where private security guards carrying carbines patrol outside the smart shops. One notable change, though, is the whitewashed cleanliness of city walls that once were covered with revolutionary slogans and anti-Marcos graffiti. They...
...Alpha Beta. 2 cases of dog food, a 75 pound sack of Keeble she had struggled out to Sam's TR herself. Inorganic vegetables, spices, a 5 pound bag of peanuts. More, much more. She knew the checkout boy-a novice at the Tribal hunting grounds, or from a novena at Alyosha's-and he had asked her, "Hey lovely one, you sure when you come down you're going to want all this stuff...
...word novena comes from the Latin word for nine, and originally meant a nine-day cycle of Masses said for the repose of a dead person's soul. Gradually it evolved into a prayer service in which people asked a favorite saint to plead their cause in heaven. In modern times, many novenas became perpetual-conducted weekly in churches throughout the year. The most popular were dedicated to the Virgin Mary under a variety of names such as Our Lady of Perpetual Help or Our Sorrowful Mother...
...novenas reached a peak of popularity during the Depression and World War II; in New Orleans, for example, nearly 30,000 people jammed the streets for Perpetual Help novenas at two adjacent churches. Now Novena Notes' circulation is down from a peak of 600,000 to 50,000, and the number of churches offering Our Sorrowful Mother novenas has dropped in five years from...
Priests have a number of explanations for the decline: competition from television, introduction of evening Mass, the florid and old-fashioned tone of most novena prayers, which are aimed at Mary rather than Christ. But the deeper reason is that the Vatican Council's liturgical reforms have given Catholics an opportunity to participate actively at Mass, thus making it vastly more meaningful than the novena as an expression of their faith. Says one Boston priest: "The Mass has taken over-thank...