Welcome to Part 4 of a new weekly series on the formation journey of Josh, a first-year novice at the Marian House of Studies in Washington, D.C. Watch for a new entry every Friday.
For a Marian seminarian, the novitiate is the most important stage of formation. This is the time when the novice learns what it is like to be a member of the Marian community. The novice follows the ancient monastic tradition of ora et labora — that is, pray and work. He will learn the dynamics of prayer and the contemplative life, study the history of religious life and mysticism in the Church, and learn to reflectively read and pray through the Scriptures. He will study the Marian Constitutions, charism, spirituality, apostolate, and the history of the Congregation. Most importantly, he will study the vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience in preparation for his temporary profession of these vows at the end of the novitiate year. In addition to prayer and study, the novice works at various manual tasks on a daily basis.
There has been a lot of joking around, this novitiate, and I am very much involved. The verbal banter reached a higher level around the time we got St. Thérèse, the Little Flower, involved.
Father Jim, our novice master, was going on pilgrimage to Europe this September. He was going to be gone for about two weeks.
What were us little novice brothers going to do without our novice master? True, we’d be getting some classes with the learned Dr. Robert Stackpole and the stouthearted Fr. Matt, but we didn’t have our novice master!
Enter “Little Thérèse”
I was aware of the approaching feast day of the Little Flower, St. Thérèse, because I was born on the day she died, Sept. 30. Her feast day is celebrated liturgically the next day, on Oct. 1, to prevent it being suppressed by St. Jerome’s feast which falls on Sept 30.
I call St. Thérèse “Little Thérèse” because she asked for this, on her deathbed.
I happened to know that Little Thérèse used to be a novice mistress. So, one evening, as my novice brothers and I relaxed around the refectory, I suggested, “We could ask Little Thérèse to be our novice mistress! We should also do a novena to her, in preparation for her feast day!”
My fellow novices listened with thoughtful expressions.
One mentioned, “But what about the overlap period? Father Jim will be back a few days before St. Thérèse’s feast day. What’ll happen? She’ll stop being our novice mistress before her feast day?”
“Well,” I answered after a pause, “that’s not my problem; that’s their problem. That’s between Little Thérèse and Fr. Jim.”
The result was as follows.
Special graces
We took Little Thérèse as our novice mistress and prayed our novena to her. Father Jim came back from his trip as scheduled a few days before Thérèse’s feast — but with COVID. Thankfully, his symptoms were mild and he quickly recovered. While he was quarantined in his room, Little Thérèse remained our novice mistress. She remained novice mistress until Fr. Jim regained control of the house shortly after her feast day, and novice petitions made during the novena received strong positive responses.
I’m certain we received many special, unknown graces during our weeks with Little Thérèse guiding us as novice mistress. The end result, where she remained our temporary novice mistress through her feast day while Divine Providence confined Fr. Jim to his room, has led to multiple novice conversations.
“We gave her control of the house and she kept it! Thérèse vs. Fr. Jim: Thérèse won!” one novice exclaimed.
My own personal feeling is that Thérèse is playful, and inspiring us through her prayers to keep her as our Novice Mistress through Fr. Jim’s sickness was a bit of her “horse play.”
One of my fellow novices mentioned, “She must love us a lot to want to stay our novice mistress through her feast day!”
I’m certain we received many special, unknown graces during our weeks with Little Thérèse guiding us as novice mistress. The end result, where she remained our temporary novice mistress through her feast day while Divine Providence confined Fr. Jim to his room, has led to multiple novice conversations.
Enter the angels
Then there was another recent time when novitiate joking reached the “higher level” — but this time it involved the angels.
My fellow novice Michael lost his wallet and all his ID cards. He prayed to St. Anthony for help, but St. Anthony thought it best, in accord with divine providence, to ignore him (as he did once to St. Thérèse herself, I might add!).
My Guardian Angel is my favorite of all my patrons after the Virgin Mary; he and I have a strong relationship.
One evening, after Michael mentioned again his frustration over the lost wallet, I mentally addressed Michael’s Guardian Angel. I joked, “If you can’t find Michael’s wallet for him, I’m going to start telling people that my angel is superior to Michael’s angel.”
The next day, a little before noon, Michael and I were sitting in an auto repair shop together, and nothing had changed. So, I advised Michael’s angel, “You’re getting close.”
Then I let Michael know that I was heckling his angel, and how I was praying. Michael laughed.
But when we got back to the novitiate house, Michael immediately found his wallet. As we went into chapel together, Michael told me with a small grin, “You convinced him!”
Saints and angels have a sense of humor, too.
Next entry on Nov. 25: "Music — or not!"
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