A Novena for Twins

So it's that time again! Last year, I posted a novena for those praying for twins.... but there was a twist. It's really a novena to the Twin Hearts. And even if you didn't get a chance to join along with me last year - you should consider giving it a try this year. I'm posting a new take on the novena this year, but feel free to use the version from last year if you prefer it. The novena starts today... and it's simple to follow along with... so will you pray with me?

The Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a movable feast on the liturgical calendar, which means that it depends on the date of Easter Sunday each year. The only constant is that it is always celebrated 19 days after Pentecost Sunday. That means for 2015, we'll celebrate the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on June 12th. The Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is celebrated on the Saturday after the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. So for 2015, we celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary on June 13th. (Sidenote: If you happen to find this novena at some other point in the year than the lead up to the Feast Days discussed above - no need to wait - go ahead and start praying it! This is a novena that can be prayed any time of the year!)

It would be difficult to meditate on the Sacred Heart of Jesus without also thinking about the woman who conceived hope for all of mankind, through the power of the Holy Spirit. It took an Immaculate Heart to do that. And that's just what God gave the Blessed Virgin Mary! So because of this beautiful Divine reality that we understand through Jesus and Mary - Jesus through Mary - meditating on the Twin Hearts seems meant for those with a special devotion to twins. Doesn't it? You will literally be praying two novenas concurrently... but starting with Christ. It's a beautiful double helix of a prayer...with the humanity of Jesus and Mary being intertwined with the divinity of the Triune God.

The truth about praying for twins is that it's not always going to manifest in birthing newborn twins biologically. A girl can hope though. This girl certainly does. While talking about herself in the third person I might add! More importantly - a prayer for twins is a sign of being open to God's will. Let it be done unto me doubly! Let me be the exhausted handmaid of the Lord! Step back for a moment and think about that. When we pray to both Hearts, we're asking Mary to understand our longing in a special way... but we're also asking Jesus for mercy. We're asking for Mary to pray for us and for Jesus to heal and soothe our hearts. So it seems a perfect pairing for those who have a special call on their hearts for twins to pray to these Two and to ask for intercession for the longing in our hearts. Join me in praying this year, and maybe next year, there will have been answers revealed in your life that will make this particular novena seem obviously fruitful. Don't mind me while I daydream about the answer being actual, tangible, crying newborn twins. I'll just be over here in crazy-town dreaming my big dreams..... conceiving hope however I can. :) 

Send me a message if you are praying with me and I'll include you in my novena! Also, don't forget to pray for our Adopt-a-Blogger this month (because every infertile girl could use a set of twins, amirite?!)  ;) And if twins aren't on your heart - pray for the intentions of the twin hearts involved in your marriage. And if you aren't married yet, pray for the twin heart that hasn't been sacramentally joined to yours yet. 

It takes about 10 minutes per night and here's the plan:

The first day, you will pray one decade of a rosary and then say the prayer to the Twin Hearts. This prayer will be prayed each of the 10 days of this novena, with the addition of your intentions at the end of it. Be specific. Ask God what's on your heart. Give Him your pain. Once you've finished with your intentions, you will begin to pray the Efficacious Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This prayer will be prayed for 9 days. On the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on 6/12, you will end the Sacred Heart novena with the first decade of a Divine Mercy Chaplet.

On the second day of prayer, you incorporate the second novena. You begin the same, but you end it differently: Pray your decade of the rosary, then praying the prayer to the Twin Hearts, then add your intentions, then pray the Sacred Heart Novena, and then you will begin the second novena. Do this by praying another decade of the rosary, then pray the Novena Prayer to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

On the last day of praying (the 10th day), You are praying a decade of the rosary, the prayer to the Twin Hearts, then adding your intentions, then praying the Novena Prayer to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and then you will end with the Regina Coeli (which can be found about half way down the page on that link). 

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If you prefer to have a hard copy of the instructions, here's a free printable of this novena. Hover over the top right corner and click on the right button to "pop out". From there, you can download, print, or save it. Feel free to post this wherever you tweet, post photos, share, or like things! 

3 Ways to Pray with a Broken Heart

In the moments when we suffer - through loss, tragedy, trauma, or loneliness - God is never far from us. We know this. We've been told this, and reminded of this, and it's supposed to be a comfort to us. Unfortunately, none of that guarantees that it will feel easy to talk to Him when we suffer. If you've been in any of the powerfully painful situations I just mentioned, you can probably relate to how difficult it may be to have a dialogue with Him. You are angry, upset, and wanting to take it out on someone, something, and in some way. You want to exhaust yourself with the power of your grief, but you also want to plead for a different truth to your situation. If God could just show you a miracle right now! He could if He wanted to, you tell yourself.

And then you convince yourself that He isn't listening, because there you still are, broken-hearted, exhausted with the burden of an ugly truth, and unable to face it. For many, myself included, this can be a crucial moment when our conversation with God begins to break down. No matter how much sense it makes to keep our broken hearts close to God and aligned with the sufferings of Christ in our own misery... these tend to be the moments when we push God away. We tell ourselves that we can't handle it anymore. God isn't listening anyway, we reason.

I'll just pull myself up by my own strength of will. I'll push through the pain. I'll find an answer. With logic. And effort. And determination. We all do this kind of bargaining. For some, this stage of "powering through the grief" can last years. For others, it can happen within the hour of finding yourself on misery's doorstep.

But at some point, aren't we are forced to deal with the Truth? Not our "truth", but rather His Truth. We are not capable of making sense of His Plan. We can't understand with human emotion and human minds how to reconcile tragedy and loss and trauma and loneliness without Him. So how exactly do we do find God in moments like that? And how do we navigate a life that is simultaneously filled with joyous moments and grievous tragedies? How do we pray with a broken heart and find God in the seemingly smothering and immovable sea of our own suffering? 

Here are 3 Ways to Pray with a Broken Heart that help me in dark moments. I hope you find them helpful as well. If you do, share this with others.

1. Jesus is Our Prayer

"There is no other way of Christian prayer than Christ. Whether our prayer is communal or personal, vocal or interior, it has access to the Father only if we pray "in the name" of Jesus. The sacred humanity of Jesus is therefore the way by which the Holy Spirit teaches us to pray to God our Father." 

This is what we learn from the Catechism. It makes sense to tell ourselves (remind ourselves) that our access to God is through His Son - especially when our hearts are broken. Invoking Jesus' name is the easiest way to call Him within us. That means so much that I can hardly put more emphasis on it. Imagine the broken-hearted woman who weeps at the death of her child. Is she capable of anything but calling out to Jesus in pain? Imagine the injured survivors of a tsunami pulled out to sea. Are they capable of anything but calling out to Jesus in their dire moment of need? The name of the Son of God is a prayer itself. When we are praying in dark moments and uncontrollably weeping and incapable of even standing, we need only to invoke His name and it becomes our entire prayer. He hears us. God the Father hears us. The Truine God weeps with us. And no perfectly fitted rhyming verse that is dutifully called to memory supersedes the power of a simple prayer. All we have to do is say His name. Jesus. Jesus. AMEN.

Yes, that imagery paints a powerful picture - pulled out to sea, with your calls in earshot of no one but God, wading through dangerous debris as you weep for what once was. And you might be thinking how so few moments in life are that stripped down and dark and desperate that we might have no other power in us but to say the Name of God over and over in our pain. True. (And you thank merciful God for that.) At the heart of all prayer in times of need - the kind that sucks the strength from our knees and the air from our lungs...the kind that is so powerful that we are completely overcome - it's a powerful reminder that we aren't performing for God. We aren't praying complicated prayers in hopes that He'll listen only if we get them right or say them with enough repetition. That helps me in my darkest moments. God suffers with us. The Author of Compassion. We are not alone, even in our darkest moments when all we can manage is to utter His name. Jesus is enough. He is our prayer. 

Let's dig deeper on that Catechism quotation though, because there is a lot of meat in that simple sentence. Communal. Personal. Vocal. Interior. These are all ways that are called out as ways to pray.

2. Get Back to Basics

When you are raised Christian, you are often taught to pray at bedtime...on your knees with your hands clasped together, kneeling at the side of your bed. But how many of us pray like that as adults? How often are our conversations with God even out loud anymore, let alone said at the foot of our bed with prayerful hands? My point: Go with what you know. Pray the way you were taught to pray. And if no one ever taught you to pray - take a moment to kneel by your bedside, palms clasped together, with your head bowed. How often do we hear someone say "God hears the prayers of children loudest"? Then what makes us think that our adult broken hearts need to aspire to more? What makes us think that a more complicated prayer is better or the goal? I'm not saying that we need to reduce our conversation with Christ to a litany of requests that might be better aimed at Santa Claus. The maturity of our prayer doesn't come from the form it takes though. Get back to basics. Do what you know. Pray with your broken heart at the foot of your bed. Yell at God - He can take it. ("The righteous cry out, the LORD hears and he rescues them from all their afflictions." Psalms 34:18). Give Him everything that broke your heart. Every last bit. What you will find is that peace and a little bit of certainty will find you right there at the foot of your bed when you do.

But what about the beauty of litanies, petitions, novenas, chaplets, Saints, and all the rest you forgot?! Yes, yes, yes, there is immense beauty and comfort to be found there. Let's talk about how the broken-hearted can use them to find God in dark moments.

3. Let the Saints Pray with You

Let me first say that you don't have to be Catholic to pray Catholic prayers. Remember that catholic means "universal". All who call Christ into their hearts are joined by that shared Truth. And one of the beauties of the universality of being Christian is that we have amazing examples of suffering available to us through the holy saints. There are people who lived before us (and among us!!) who really get our pain in a human way, without being divine themselves (and honestly sometimes that is easier to relate to in dark moments because the divine suffering and Passion of Christ can seem so unreachable). Use that gateway of understanding as a way to find Jesus through your pain. For nearly every instance of suffering, there is a human saint known to us. They all came into existence just like us. They suffered just like us. They failed just like us. And they were purified through their pain and deep suffering by a merciful God who heard THEIR prayers. When we pray with broken hearts and we give God our suffering, we are saying YES to drawing nearer to sainthood ourselves. Let it be done unto me! When we pray for the favor of God by asking others who have suffered to pray for us, we are uniting our pain with those who understand. It's not us vs. the world, in another clear defeat. It's all of us with a shared suffering speaking at once. Take a moment to look up the "saint of suffering" or the "saint of infertility" or the "patron of loneliness". There are gobs of them - waiting to intercede with God on your behalf. Let them help amplify your broken-hearted prayers to Christ. The amazing thing about the saints is that they often are associated with specific prayers. You don't even have to find the words yourself! Sometimes God gave them directly to the saint with detailed instructions on exactly what to say and do in difficult times! St. Faustina is a great example of this with her Divine Mercy chaplet and story. There are so many others.

Let structured prayer help you find an inner peace that is hidden underneath your misery. Let it help connect you back to what you already know. Those prayers can be simple verses from the Bible or they can be structured into several day long prayers (that's what a novena is), or they can take the form of a rosary (just a couple of prayers, said in repetition, highlighting Christ's suffering - it's not hard to say a rosary and you don't have to be Catholic to try!). There is comfort to be found in the Word of God, but oftentimes when we are hurting, the empathy of someone who has suffered similarly to us can be helpful. It's a shortcut to find God again through the pain. Use the saints and the prayers they bring us. They are real human examples of God talking to us directly. Listen to that Voice.

Lastly, you don't need the perfect words. There is purpose to this suffering, even if you can't see it. And God has already redeemed it. Remember this: The LORD is close to the brokenhearted, saves those whose spirit is crushed. (Psalm 34:19, NABRE)

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Whatever way you choose, know that you aren't praying alone. My family prays for broken hearts daily. We have a specific devotion to those struggling with infertility, but our prayers our broad enough and specific enough to be including you and your struggles too. If you have shared your pain with us in any way, you are prayed for each day. If you are suffering in pain, illness, loneliness, tragedy, with loss, and any number of circumstances...we're doing our part here to help carry the burden a tiny bit. How do you pray with a broken heart? Tell us in the comments - we can always use your inspiration!

Twin Novena

The Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary occur close to each other in tradition on the calendar.

Here is a twin novena to pray to the Two Hearts. 

We pray for the intentions of twins, but also to approach the twin hearts of the Son and His Mother with our deepest and most fervent intentions for our marriage.

If you would like to follow along with me, here is the plan (it takes about 10-15 minutes per night):

Tonight you will pray one decade of a rosary and say this prayer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus with your intentions: http://www.ewtn.com/devotionals/heart/sh_novena.htm (you will pray this for 9 days, starting today 6/19.)

Tomorrow, you will continue to pray the decade of the rosary and the prayer for the Sacred Heart of Jesus and your intentions. You will then pray another decade of the rosary and a prayer to the Immaculate Heart of Mary with those intentions: http://www.ewtn.com/devotionals/heart/Im_novena.htm

On the last day of the novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, you finish with praying the first decade of a Divine Mercy Chaplet (which can be found here: http://www.praydivinemercy.com/ ). Once you've finished that, you continue with your regular decade and prayer and intentions for Mary.

On the last day of the novena to the Sacred Heart of Mary, you will finish with the Regina Coeli (which can be found here about half way down: http://www.marypages.com/PrayerstoMary.htm ) 

You will finish with this prayer to the Twin Hearts: http://www.ewtn.com/Devotionals/heart/offering.htm

I hope you'll join me in praying this twin novena to the two precious and Sacred Hearts of our Blessed Mother and Her Son.

Let me know if you have any questions in the comments and I'm happy to help!