Fr. Roger J. Landry
Novena in Preparation for the Immaculate Conception
Leonine Forum
November 28 through December 8, 2020
Introduction
For centuries, Catholics have been preparing for the celebration of the Immaculate Conception of our Lady with a novena of prayer.
The Immaculate Conception is truly God’s immediate preparation for the Redemption, the rescue mission in which the Son of God would take flesh from Mary’s womb and give his humanity to save the human race.
Imitating the first followers of Jesus after his Ascension, who huddled around Mary in anticipation of the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, Christian believers ever since have been making Marian novenas asking for particular graces.
The novena to the Immaculate Conception is one in which we prepare not only to celebrate the beginning of Mary’s life in the womb of her Mother St. Anne and not only to mark the beginning of God’s plan of redemption by preserving her free from all stain of original sin so that she could give a full hearted yes to God’s plans at the Annunciation and no sin would touch the Son of God made man in her womb, but also so that we through her intercession we might become holy and without stain in God’s sight.
This Novena is a fruit of the work of the Spiritual Life Committee of the Leonine Forum alumni in New York City, led by Giovanna Romeo, Lucy Kimari and Dureid Khamo, who approached the Leonine Forum chaplain, Fr. Roger Landry, to lead them. It also would not have been possible without the work of 2020-21 Leonine Fellows David Szmigielski (and his fiancée Tiffany Vassilatos) who filmed the videos and Olivia Martiniello who edited them.
The eleven days of prayer will last from November 28 through December 8. The novena proper will be preceded by an introductory video and followed by a meditation on the actual Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. Each of the meditations for the nine-days will be based on one of the titles of Our Lady from the Litany of Loreto that speak of virtues of particular relevance for Leonine Fellows’ integrating their faith into their professional and civic lives and bringing the light of Catholic Social Teaching to the world as salt, light and leaven.
The itinerary for the spiritual pilgrimage will be:
- Nov. 28 — “A Novena: Praying with Mary for the Help of the Holy Spirit”
- Nov. 29 — “Mary as Mother of Divine Grace”
- Nov. 30 — “Mary as Seat of Wisdom”
- Dec. 1 — “Mary as Mirror of Justice”
- Dec. 2 — “Mary as Mother of Mercy”
- Dec. 3 — “Mary as Queen of Peace”
- Dec. 4 — “Mary as Mother Most Amiable”
- Dec. 5 — “Mary as Mother Most Chaste”
- Dec. 6 — “Mary as Queen of the Family”
- Dec. 7 — “Mary as Queen of All Saints”
- Dec. 8 — “The Immaculate Conception: The Virgin Without Sin Prays For Us Sinners”
To watch the videos, please click on the respective images below.
November 28 — A Novena: Praying with Mary for the Help of the Holy Spirit
November 29 — “Mary as Mother of Divine Grace”
The Immaculate Conception is a classic example of how God always makes the first move, acting in Mary’s life from the time she was an embryo, far before she would be capable of making any moral choices. He filled her with grace (our participation as creatures in God’s own life), leaving no room for sin. Mary always chose in accordance with grace not only saying “fiat” to God but loving us as God loved her. In her earthly life, she interceded with her Son for others, like she did the young couple in Cana, and as she revealed to St. Catherine Labouré, she never ceases to ask him to shower us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens.
Since everything begins with God’s action, we, on the first day of our Novena, focus on how Mary as Mother of Divine Grace prays for us to receive everything God wants to give us so that we may be filled with grace and holy and immaculate in God’s sight.
November 30 — “Mary as Seat of Wisdom”
Wisdom is the capacity to see things as they really are, as God sees them and no creature has ever been more filled with divine understanding and perspective than Mary. She pondered and treasured the things of God in her contemplative heart, including the mysteries that transcended her comprehension. We call her “seat of wisdom” because Wisdom incarnate took on her very flesh and sat on her lap.
On this second day of our Novena, conscious of how much we, like the young Solomon, need God’s wisdom to govern ourselves and our responsibilities, we turn to Mary and ask her help to allow her Son to set us his throne within us, so that we may see everything in divine light, choose wisely, and help others to align their lives in accordance with the truth.
December 1 — “Mary as Mirror of Justice”
The Book of Wisdom depicted justice as a “mirror” (Wis 7:6) and Mary fulfilled that prophetic image. The more perfect, the more spotless, the smoother the mirror, the more faithful the reflection. She is the mirror of the “Just One,” her Son. She shows us how to ad-just our life to God and others and to give God and others the love they are due. We see her passion for justice in her Magnificat as she praised God for lifting up the lowly and throwing down the arrogant, filling the hungry with good things and sending away the self-sufficient empty-handed. Just as mirrors allow us see ourselves and determine if anything is out of place, so looking into the mirror of justice who is Mary, we not only are able better to glimpse the just God but are able to see those areas in our life that must be corrected.
As we are sent out by God to a world rife with various types of injustice, God seeks to form us to ad-just ourselves to his word and will, to do the right thing even when others are doing the wrong thing, even when we can get away with injustice. To continue Christ’s mission, we’re called to be personally righteous and to be his instruments to bring about true social justice, righting wrongs, rehabilitating victims and forming a people who are truly free because they live by truth and goodness.
On this third day of our novena, we ask Mary, the Mirror of Justice, to pray for us that we, like her, may resemble God’s justice and do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8).
December 2 — “Mary as Mother of Mercy”
Yesterday we focused on Mary as “Mirror of Justice,” but justice, alone, is not enough, for if we received and gave others only what we and they deserve, then our just deserts would involve punishment indeed for all our sins that ultimately brought Jesus to crucifixion. Justice must be tied to mercy. Mary became mother not only of the “Just One” but of “Mercy Incarnate,” who out of mercy paid in full the punishment our sins merited. Mary has never ceased being invoked by the Christian people as “Mother of Mercy,” “Virgin Most Merciful,” as well as “Refuge of Sinners,” “Comforter of the Afflicted,” “Health of the Sick” and “Solace of Migrants.”
We see Mary’s mercy in the Visitation, when she hustles to care for her elderly pregnant relative. We see it in Cana when she intervenes to save a young couple and their families from embarrassment. We see it on Calvary, when she comforted her Son to the last. We see it in many Marian apparitions, in which she came to the aid of her sons and daughters in need and sought to help open them to implore and receive more fully her Son’s mercy.
We are living at a time that St. John Paul II and Pope Francis have called a “kairos of mercy,” in which the manifestations of God’s mercy are as needed as ever.
On this fourth day of our novena, we ask Mary, Mother of Mercy, to pray for us so that we might align ourselves fully to her merciful heart of her Son, to receive that gift in the Sacrament of Confession this Advent, and to pay it forward in the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
December 3 — “Mary as Queen of Peace”
In 1916, during World War I, Pope Benedict XV named Mary “Queen of Peace” and inserted that title into the Litany of Loreto as its last invocation or exclamation point. Mary had long been invoked as a special intercessor for peace, as we see in Lepanto in 1571 and in Vienna in 1683. Her Son had come into the world through her as “Prince of Peace,” left and gave us his peace during the Last Supper, greeted us with “Shalom” (“Peace be with you”) as soon as he rose from the dead, and sent us out as “peacemakers,” saying that when we follow his example in making and building peace we are justly called children of God.
More than anyone else, Mary shows us how to live in peace with God, others and within ourselves, and never ceases to intercede that her Son’s peace might reign in all aspects of our life and world. Peace is a tranquility of order first with God, and the sinless, loving Virgin Mary shows us that peace. It is next a tranquility of order with others, and Mary shows us how to restore and live in a holy, self-giving communion of persons shattered by original sin. It’s finally a tranquility of order within, between body and soul, reason, emotions and will, and Mary shows us that perfect integration.
On this fifth day of the novena, as we look out into a country and world full of conflicts, we ask Mary as Queen of Peace to pray for us that we may have that tranquility of order with God, others and within, that we may cooperate fully with God’s will to proclaim the definitive peace treaty Christ made for the human race, and that we might become the true peacemakers (not peacewishers) to which our baptismal filiation summons us.
December 4 — “Mary as Mother Most Amiable”
During the Last Supper, Jesus said, “I have called you friends, because I have revealed to you everything I have heard from my Father.” Holiness is true friendship with God and no one shows us that friendship better than Mary. She is so amiable precisely because she is filled with the joy that comes from living in God’s friendship. The Christian people have called her “Mother Most Amiable” because she is the truly lovable friend — of God and all of us — in good times and bad, in sickness and health, all our days. They have called her “Cause of our Joy” because she seeks to facilitate our friendship with the same divine Source of joy who took on her flesh and dwelled among us.
We are living in an age in which many Catholics, including some of the most devout, have lost their joy and amiability. They become the world’s judges, critics, and condescending nags. Rather than full of gratitude for the great gifts with which God has blessed them, they obsess about what they or others lack. And rather than radiating the attractive presence of God within, the repel others, as the joyless, hard-to-love Pharisees did during Jesus’ age.
Mary shows us a different way. In her holiness, she seeks to make holiness beautiful and attractive. In her joy, she seeks to help other souls magnify the Lord and rejoice in God their Savior. In her lovability, she wants to help others be filled with the love of God and show that love toward others. In her friendship, she seeks to center it on the greatest common good of all, friendship with her divine Son.
On this sixth day of our novena, we ask Mary’s intercession that we and all Christians may become the most friendly and joyful people around, the types of people who will become truly effective apostles of the happiest person who ever lived, the Son of God born into the Holy Family.
December 5 — “Mary as Mother Most Chaste”
In the Book of Genesis, after the fall of Adam and Eve, God promised to put enmity between the “woman” and the serpent, between her offspring and his. The devil had sought, successfully, to corrupt human love and thereby corrupt the communion of love we have with God. The redemption would therefore involve the restoration of love by helping it triumph over the concupiscence that resulted from original sin. The virtue that would make that redemption and restoration possible, and keep love truly loving, is chastity.
When St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “This is God’s will for you, your sanctification,” he immediately added, “Therefore, avoid all porneia” (1 Thes 4:3-4). Porneia, from which we get the word “pornography,” means all forms of unchastity. He was indicating the opposite of holiness is unchastity because the opposite of love is lust. It makes sense, therefore, that “Mary most holy” would be “Mother Most Chaste” and would be praying for us to be truly chaste as well.
Chastity is probably the most misunderstood of Christian virtues, including by Catholics. Because we speak of a “vow of chastity” in the context of religious priests and sisters, many think chastity means “celibacy.” Because we call teenage abstinence education “Chastity programs,” we think chastity means “continence.” But chastity is a virtue that applies to everyone, including married couples, because it keeps love self-giving rather than taking, protecting rather than predatory. The Catechism links chastity to self-mastery and describes it as the integration of sexuality within the person as a whole. St. John Paul II linked it to love, purity (seeing God in others) and piety (reverencing God we see in others).
In these decades after the sexual revolution when so many have been hurt by sexual sins, when some have attempted to redefine love, marriage, family, even human anthropology according to fallen categories, the need for chastity is great. We can never become holy, become loving, become more fully the image and likeness of God without chastity, and that’s why our “Mother Most Chaste,” “Mother Most Pure,” the “Holy Virgin of Virgins” and “Queen of Virgins” is praying for us that we might become chaste like she was, like St. Joseph was, like Jesus was, and experience the freedom and happiness that flows from keeping love loving, raising it to the dignity of the other as a whole.
On this seventh day of the novena, we ask Mary’s help that we, too, might not pray like the young St. Augustine, “Give me chastity, but not yet,” but rather, “Make me most chaste,” so that we can be truly holy disciples and ardent apostles in the midst of a world that needs to learn how to love unselfishly.
December 6 — “Mary as Queen of the Family”
Jesus could have entered the world as a 30 year old and immediately commenced his public ministry, but he entered our humanity the same way we do, within a family, as a one-cell embryo hypostatically united to divinity within the womb of his mother. God the Father chose her to be the Mother of her Son, the King of Kings, and that Son chose her from his throne on Calvary to be the mother of his family the Church. 25 years ago this December St. John Paul II added the title “Queen of the Family” to the Litany of Loreto, as a means by which to ask her prayers for the family.
The family is an essential part of God’s plans. He created the human person in his image and likeness, male and female, and their communion of persons open to life is the greatest human analogy to the loving generative communion of persons who is the Holy Trinity. But since the beginning, as we pondered yesterday, the family has been under attack by the evil one. That attack continues today in practical and conceptual ways. Under this title, we turn to Mary and solicit her help.
The family is meant to be the domestic Church, the good soil in which the seeds of faith planted in Baptism grow. It’s meant to be a school of prayer, of moral and social virtues, of sanctity. The family is not only the building block of society but the sculptor of the living stones who build up the Church.
Mary never ceases to pray for the family entrusted to her by her Son. She recognizes that the family that prays together stays together and she tries to form the family to have something of the atmosphere of Nazareth, where family members place Jesus at the center, place their needs in his hands, and receives from him the strength they need.
On this eighth day of the novena, we ask Mary to remember our families as well as every family, particularly those in most need of prayers. We ask her intercession for us to prioritize the family in an age of rampant individualism. We implore her help for the family of the Church, that we may live up to our vocation to help make the Church in the world a family of families.
December 7 — “Mary as Queen of All Saints”
The purpose of the Immaculate Conception was to keep Mary holy — unstained from all sin — from the first moment of her existence. Her maternal mission is to try to help us to become holy and unblemished before God. She has been assumed, body and immaculate soul, into heaven where she continuously intercedes for us that we might share that same eternal joy. That is the reason why we invoke her as “Queen of All Saints,” as “Queen Assumed into Heaven,” as “Gate of Heaven,” as “Mother of the Church” (including of the Church Triumphant) and “Mother of Hope,” including that “great hope” for eternal life and love.
A fitting end to our novena of preparation for the celebration of her Immaculate Conception is this focus on holiness. Everything the Church does is meant to be in view of the perfection of charity that is holiness. The greatest crises facing the Church, as St. Josemaria Escriva once wrote, are crises of saints and Mary is praying that we will be part of God’s full response to the crises facing the Church and the world today.
December 8 — “The Immaculate Conception: The Virgin Without Sin Prays For Us Sinners”
We have focused throughout the novena of preparation for today’s Solemnity on various titles taken from the Litany of Loreto by which the Church has invoked Mary’s prayers throughout the centuries. Today we could focus on three titles associated with the reality we mark today: “Mother Undefiled,” “Mother Inviolate” and “Queen Conceived Without Original Sin.”
But the title that is most fitting to ponder is the one she gave herself in 1858 when appearing to St. Bernadette Soubirous in the Grotto of Massabielle in Lourdes. When 14 year old Bernadette asked the “Lady in White” what her name was, Mary did not respond by saying “I am the Mother of God” or “I am the Mother of Jesus” or even “Mary of Nazareth.” She replied in the local patois that Bernadette understood, “Eu sou a imaculada concepciou,” “I am the Immaculate Conception.” Mary identified herself fully, she defined herself entirely, with God’s grace at the first moment of her life.
The great saints have pondered the why behind the what of the Immaculate Conception and they’ve described two reasons for its fittingness: first, so that Mary, free from sin, could say a wholehearted yes to God’s plans when the Archangel Gabriel appeared to her; and, second, so that no sin would touch the Word-of-God-made-man growing in her womb. As a consequence, Mary is a powerful advocate for us to be free from sin through the Sacraments so that we, too, might give our fiat to God in choices small and big; and so that no sin may touch that same Son when he enters into us through the Sacraments, most especially Holy Communion.
This year, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception has extra meaning as it is the exact 150thanniversary of Pope Blessed Pius IX’s declaring St. Joseph the patron of the universal Church (on December 8, 1870). St. Joseph was one who always protected and provided for Mary and shows the whole Church how to love her, as together they nourished Jesus and continue to pray for us. We ask St. Joseph’s prayers today that we may grow to love her as he did and to receive her chaste love as he did.
As we finish this period of Marian prayer, we turn to Mary asking anew for divine grace, for wisdom and prudence, justice, mercy, peace, amiability, joy, chastity and purity, for peace, purity and ultimately sanctity, praying, as we have throughout this novena in the world taught to St. Catherine Labouré, “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!”