Nine Around One

Nine Around One: A Novena of Companions is now available in English, Spanish, Italian, and Polish on the Resources page of FranciscanVoice.org, and at VozFranciscana.org. Two booklets are prepared for you. A leader’s book with every text printed out, so that whoever leads never has to look anything up. There is also a participant aid, nine sheets, one for each evening, front and back. No day of the week is printed anywhere in them, so they can be reused annually.

A novena of mourning. Novenas did not begin as preparation for a feast. They began as mourning: the nine days the Church has always kept beside her dead, and still keeps for a pope. This year that older meaning guides our Novena of Companions. The ninth evening is the night Francis of Assisi died, and his feast arrives the next morning, so we keep the wake and get ready for the feast in the same nine evenings. The ninth evening does not replace a Transitus, but gives one for those who cannot attend.

Nine buried around him. Each evening one companion of Francis speaks: Sylvester, Bernard of Quintavalle, Lady Jacoba, Masseo, William of England, Angelo Tancredi, John of England, Rufino, Leo. All of them are buried near to Francis’ tomb, either in the crypt or close by in the Lower Basilica.

The prayer. Each evening is modeled on the four movements of prayer that Clare gave to Agnes of Prague. We gaze by listening to a companion, consider by holding one word of the Church’s social teaching, contemplate by sitting with the Scripture and the silence after it, and imitate by carrying one small thing away and doing it before we meet again. One verse of the Canticle is added each night, in the order Francis wrote it, until the ninth evening has the whole poem for those assembled to sing, as it was sung for Francis at his passing.