Ever since I began this blog (and it might even predate that, it might have been soon after I reverted to the Church) I noticed that sometimes a novena ends on the day of the feast, while at other times it ends on the day before. I was never able to figure out why. 

As I mentioned in this early post:

After His Resurrection, Jesus remained with His disciples for 40 days. He Ascended into Heaven to return to the Father, and promised that He would send the Advocate (The Holy Spirit, a/k/a The Third Person of the Holy Trinity to guide us.) Pentecost was ten days after His Ascension, and after their day’s journey return to Jerusalem, the disciples gathered to pray for nine days.

Acts 1:12-14

Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. When they entered the city they went to the upper room where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James.
All these devoted themselves with one accord to prayer, together with some women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.

Thus begins the Catholic tradition of praying a novena. It is a prayer of nine day’s duration. Not 24 hours a day for nine days, although the above Scriptural passage seems to imply that they prayed that intensely. Nowadays, it is a prayer of varying duration, said once a day for nine days.

The above passage implies that they prayed for nine days, and then the Feast of Pentecost took place. From what I discovered online, that is the ‘classic’ way to schedule a novena: to finish the day before. The prayerful recitation of the novena is an act of preparation leading up to the feast. This is more of a liturgical style of scheduling the novena and was common in the Early Church and up through to the Middle Ages.

The other method, that of ending on the day of the feast, arose out of popular devotions and parish life (startting around the Middle Ages.) The idea is that the devotees of the saint conclude the novena on the saint’s feast day; thus honoring the saint by including their day (and likely a Mass in their honor) into the novena. This type of novena scheduling is more of a celebratory nature as opposed to the preparatory nature of the liturgical method.

Finally. I’ve been writing this blog for 19 years and quite often I mention my confusion over this; you’d have thought I’d have looked it up by now. Some people!

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