Revised St. Charles and St. Martin Novenas

[Left to right] St. Charles Borromeo, by Luca Giordano; St. Martin de Porres, Giles Priere, 1990

Two great men each died on November 3. Charles Borromeo passed away on that day in 1594, and exactly 45 years later, on a different continent, Martin de Porres died in 1639. Their lives overlapped by 15 years, but they never met; most likely neither one ever heard of the other. Scroll down for today’s novena prayers.

Why does the Catholic liturgical calendar honor holy people on the anniversary of their deaths? The usual human practice is to commemorate a person’s life on the day it began – not when it ended. In fact, the Church only marks the births of three figures in sacred history: Jesus Christ; his mother, Mary; and John the Baptist; moreover, their deaths or passings receive greater consideration than their births. Think, for example, about how the three-day solemnity of Easter overshadows our observation of Christmas. On the other hand, the liturgical calendar is brimming with celebrations to mark the deaths of numerous holy men and women. Attention to the anniversary of a saint’s death does not mean we somehow relish death. Rather, we appreciate that in the life of a saint, the moment of death is not a defeat but an immense victory. We glorify the passing of a holy person because we recognize it as a greater birth: his or her entrance into a mysterious, luminous, and eternal life that we’ve each been promised.

How fascinating it would be to see the world from God’s perspective: panning out so far that we could take in the vast reaches of the cosmos all at once while simultaneously zooming in on the particular details of each person’s life, no matter what time period she inhabits! Imagine one eye as a telescope powerful enough to observe the whole of reality and the other equipped with an infinite number of microscopes, trained everywhere, in all times at once. And everything God sees receives an unimaginably attentive and unwaveringly absorbed gaze of tenderness, of love.

God would have thus been watching Charles and Martin at the same time and with the same sense of divine, parental delight. In Italy, Charles (or Carlo) grew up the scion of a family so wealthy that it owned two islands – each with a castle on it! – in Lake Maggiore, near Milan. Martin’s (or Juan Martín) single mother, a freed Black slave, raised him in Peru, where they suffered extreme poverty. In some sense, we could say that Charles had to overcome the inconvenience of his wealth in order to follow the path that could bring him fully to life. Perhaps we could even call Martin’s poverty, and the evils of racism he suffered, a strange “advantage;” these objectively harmful circumstances increased his capacity for compassion and strengthened his humanity.

Over the next nine days we will journey with each of these men, training our gaze on each of their lives at once, in order to get some small taste of God’s view of our human drama.

One note: though both men died on November 3rd, the Church in the United States observes St. Charles’ feast day on November 4th. For our purposes, we have added an additional “preparatory” day to the beginning of St. Charles’ novena so that we can finish in time for his liturgical memorial. Each day of the novenas, we will post new information about our two holy men to this blog. Tomorrow we will tell you why this pair of saints is so meaningful to our work at Revolution of Tenderness.

A note on the sources for the prayers: the introduction and first prayer for each day of the St. Charles’ novena come from a booklet he wrote to provide spiritual healing for his people in the time of the plague. These prayers struck us as so fitting, given our current plague, that we have incorporated them. To introduce the St. Martin novena prayers, we have quoted from the writings of the Peruvian saint’s many admirers. Otherwise, we have turned to the liturgical texts from the Roman Missal and the Liturgy of the Hours to furnish the best prayers for our novenas, just as we did in honor of St. Jude.

We will post biographical notes and daily novena prayers each day for ten days. We hope you will take this double journey with us!

We invoke these two holy men’s help as we turn our attention to the upcoming fundraising season. If you find these prayers helpful to you, or if your lives were enriched through participating in the Festival of Friendship, or if you simply want to support our mission, to provide humanities education and free cultural events in Appalachia and beyond, we ask you to please consider supporting us through Network for Good (Network for Good allows you to join the Revolution through either a one-time or regular tax-deductible donation to support the work of Revolution of Tenderness) or Patreon (Patreon offers a three-tiered opportunity for regular, tax-deductible giving. Each tier offers exclusive bonuses — from shout-outs on the Revolution of Tenderness Podcast to free books and Revolution of Tenderness items emblazoned with the colorful Borromean rings).

The Prayers:

St. Charles Borromeo
Preparatory Day:

The hand of God has been so kind to us in the scourge of pestilence with which he has visited us in these times, that we can also well understand how he seeks only our conversion and life, not our death.
[Charles Borromeo, “Booklet of Reminders”]

You, Lord, who have the power to renew the heavens, the earth, and all things, give to all of us that new heart, that new spirit which you promised us through the mouth of your prophet: And I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you (Ezekiel 36:26). Bestow it upon us, Lord, with such abundance that it will produce in us, efficaciously and constantly, new resolutions, new customs, a new way of life, and in the end, that eternal renewal which the new Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ, already came into the world to bring us. With this help, our heart shall be enlarged, reforms will no longer seem hard, nor your service burdensome. But the yoke will be sweet and the weight of your holy commandments light to us. We ask this through your son, our Lord, Jesus Christ.
[Charles Borromeo, “Booklet of Reminders”]

Preserve in the midst of your people,
we ask, O Lord, the spirit with which you filled
the Bishop Saint Charles Borromeo,
that your Church may be constantly renewed
and, by conforming herself to the likeness of Christ,
may show his face to the world.
Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

Our Father, Mail Mary, Glory Be

St. Martin de Porres
Day One:

“What for others could have easily turned into a life of bitterness and anger, for Martin became an opportunity for holiness. Martin entrusted the chaos and the poverty of those early years to God, who took the Spanish and African threads of his heart and wove them into a beautiful tapestry of love. Perhaps Martin’s greatest gift was his capacity to let God turn his suffering into compassion.”
[Rev. Brian Pierce, OP]

Blessed is the man who is found without fault,
who does not make gold his life's object,
who does not put his trust in wealth.
- His future will be secure in the Lord.

Who is this man that we may praise him,
for he has done wonders in his life?
- His future will be secure in the Lord.

O God, who led Saint Martin de Porres
by the path of humility to heavenly glory,
grant that we may so follow his radiant example in this life
as to merit to be exalted with him in heaven.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
[Collect for the Memorial of St. Martin de Porres, Roman Missal]

Our Father, Mail Mary, Glory Be