Devotions: utility and the graces of the novena

1. What good is the pious practice of novenas. Our ardor of faith often thickens; we need something to help us shake our torpor, to find the lost path of virtue, to persuade ourselves that we too can become saints. The novenas aim for this. If you follow them with fervor, don't you feel better afterwards? Of'; I want to be a saint, and a great saint.

2. How to pass novenas. Each saint has a particular virtue that stands out over the others, and which you lack; every saint was successful because he wanted to be one and was overcome, mortified, prayed; every Saint is a protector that we have in heaven ... In the novenas he prays, mortified, fervent, .. St. Francis de Sales invites us to wait for you without taking on too many things, but fulfilling all our duties with meticulous accuracy. And how do you go about it? What are you doing more than usual?

3. We are looking for a special advantage for us. It is good to pray, but it is also better to practice the virtues: we meditate on these in the novenas, fixing ourselves on the one we are missing; we practice this every day, pleading with the Saint with frequent ejaculations to love us. Today, beginning the novena of Blessed Sebastiano Valfrè, we think of what virtue we need of it, and we are prepared to spend it in a meditated way.

PRACTICE. - Recite three Pater, Ave and Gloria al Beato, and propose to practice the virtue you have set for yourself