The Pentecost Novena

OK. I'll blog through the Pentecost novena. For the uninitiated, a Novena (from novem, nine) is a nine-day period of private or public devotion in the Christian tradition. Whereas an octave has a festal feel to it, the novena carries more of a spirit of hopeful yearning, or waiting for the grace of God. There are several different kinds of novena. They are sometimes used as a period of mourning after a death: St Jerome wrote that "The number nine in Holy Writ is indicative of suffering and grief" (Ezech., vii, 24; -- P.L., XXV, 238, cf. XXV, 1473). But novenas can also be made simply as a special period of prayer, or - as in the Pentecost novena - as a time of preparation. There are Novena meditations and prayers on various different themes; I've chosen 'Waiting' as my theme, picking up the words of Christ at his Ascension: Wait here in the city until you are clothed with power from on high. It's hard enough waiting for something when you know what's going to happen. Remember the feeling of waiting for your birthday, or Christmas, when you were a kid? But it's even harder waiting for something when you don't know WHAT is going to happen, and you don't know WHEN it's going to happen. That's what the disciples had to do - just sit still and wait. "Don't leave the city until..." Why did Jesus make them wait? I think it was as much the sitting still as the waiting that was the point of the exercise. Just waiting a while, if you were getting on with other stuff in the meantime, wouldn't be any big deal really. But having to SIT STILL - not travel about, not distract yourself with other things, just reach a place of stillness - meant that when the Spirit came they were ready to handle it. They weren't just waiting, passively, FOR something to happen. It was an active, expectant waiting - like the phrase from the Psalms, they were 'Waiting ON God'.