Take time to say a little prayer at the Redemptorist Novena
Annual religious gathering is reaching out to Limerick's diverse population this year
LIMERICK'S annual Novena at the Redemptorist Church at Mount St Alphonsus in the city is to take place from June 14 to June 22, with six celebrations to be held each day.
Morning celebrations will be held daily at 7:30am, 10am and 11:30am, with more Novena celebrations taking place in the evenings at 6pm, 7:30pm and 9pm. Celebrations will be hosted by Fr Gerard Moloney, Fr Tadhg Herbert and Fr Ryan Holovlasky.
The theme for this year’s Novena is “Creating a culture of care… following the example of our compassionate God.”
Fr Brian Nolan explained that the goal of the theme is “to try and help people and try and look at the areas that maybe need that little bit of help”.
Fr Nolan explained that he feels “the opportunity for people to write out their own prayers” is what makes the Novena celebration special for so many, as people will “do that by the thousands over the nine days”.
He described how “all of the people who are gathered in the church are praying with and praying for each other”, and how he thinks “that’s far more important than any of the preaching that we Redemptorists do”.
Fr Nolan acknowledges that numbers have “no doubt fallen in recent years with Covid and the crisis in the Church”.
A turnout of approximately 5,000 people per day is expected - a significant decrease to the 12-13,000 people Fr Nolan saw attending the Novena celebrations of his youth.
Many will choose to instead attend the services online, with each celebration being streamed live on novena.ie.
The free Novena Counselling Service will run from June 17 to June 21, with morning sessions held at 9:30am-12:30pm and evening sessions at 5:30pm-8pm.
Confessions will be held every day except Sunday, June 16. A special service will be held by Fr. Luis Gomez through Portuguese at 4pm on Sunday, June 16 for the Brazilian Redemptorist community, with Fr. Roman Lahish delivering a sermon in Ukrainian on June 22 for the Ukrainian community.
The highly-anticipated Novena celebration for First Communion classes will be held on Monday, June 17 at 11:30am.
The blessing of families and children will take place at every celebration on June 16 and reconciliation services will be held on Tuesday, June 18 at 11:30am and 7:30pm.