Godsend: Limerick Redemptorists' Novena is more popular than ever

A CHORAL whir reverbates in the church, loud enough to breeze past the timber doorway, low enough to be outsung by the chorus of murmuring worshippers who are eager to begin their nine days of prayer.

One by one, men and women of backgrounds made of all shapes and sizes, trudge along patiently into the Redemptorist Church even with the drizzle peppering over the masses.

With the Leaving Cert underway, you would expect the angels to crack open a cloud or two to let the sunshine seep through, but apparently this light rainfall is a Godsend.

“It has been good Novena weather,” admits Fr Seamus Enright, the rector of the church, which has been celebrating the annual solemn Novena, attracting tens of thousands to the popular place of worship.

For many attendants, the Novena is heavily-pencilled into their calendars. Not that they would forget, as a large number claim they have been praying to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, either for most of their life or since the start of the Novena.

If the personal petitions are anything to go by, there are pockets of life mired in crisis—drug addiction, relationship fallouts, homelessness, illness, and even many about exams.

But even behind that veil of anonymity, it can be like being clairvoyantly embraced by strangers in the opposite pew. Especially after loved ones are no longer with them.

John Michael Cosgrave, from Clarina, is with his mother Nelly, who used to attend the Novena every year with her husband Sean, who died eight years ago.

“I have been coming, maybe, 15 years?” he looks up, pensively. “I come with my mam and I used to come with my dad [Sean] when he was alive, and he died eight years ago. And I kept it up then after that.

“I found it very relaxing after he passed away, to be able to come here and to try and keep it up and all that.”

Nora Noonan just needs to walk the stretch of South Circular Road via New Road to have her prayers heard, and she says she has been doing that all her life.

Having them heard is one thing, but to have them answered is what all worshippers yearn. And for Nora, it appeared that God answered her prayers just hours before the first Novena sermon.

“Well, I think I had a miracle before it started,” she smiles. “My sister was sitting in her bed at 8.30pm last night waiting to go for an operation at 9pm, and the doctor came in and said: ‘Mary, you look fine. We are not doing any operation.’ And that is true as God. And I said to her: ‘That’s from all the prayers.’ Because I come down here all the time, up and down lighting candles and saying prayers.”

I sense from her bottled-up excitement that she is eager to say cheers to a special someone inside the church for that miracle, so I leave her off.

Before and after the congregation, the carpark is where it’s at, where old friends reunite, gossiping, exchanging numbers and having their two cents on this soft day.

But it’s the least likely place you would find Mary McAleese, the former President of Ireland, who was there to shoot an RTE documentary ahead of the Pope’s visit for the triennial World Meeting of Families in Dublin this August.

Interesting, I thought, on the day she makes front page headlines for condemning Pope Francis’ view on abortion.

But Fr Enright says she didn’t discuss this and, as an Redemptorist oblate, walked into the church like an ordinary member of the congregation and had a cup of tea with the lads afterwards.

“It was quite an informal visit, there was no real conversation with us, but we were happy to see her,” he tells the Leader. 

Fr Enright, last week, spoke about the “generational heartbreak” felt by grannies and grandads, whose Catholic-reared children were not raising their kids as Catholics. With that in mind, has the Novena attendances exuded hope for the future?

Yes, he says. This year, in particular, there has been a strong emphasis on the multicultural variety in the pews. “If you stand up in the altar and look down, there is quite a mixture in the congregation,” he says.  “When I see the fact that so many people come, that always keeps my hopes up.”

The Novena runs until June 23.