Pentecost Novena

If your memory goes back before Vatican II, you will recall that every respectable parish had its perpetual or ongoing novena. These were in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ under some title, or they were devotions to Mary as Our Lady of Perpetual Help (originally a devotion of the Eastern churches), Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, or even Our Lady of Sorrows. Various saints had their own novenas, usually preceding their feast days; but St. Anthony was so popular that he might find himself bombarded by prayer on a weekly basis throughout the year. Parish novenas had several things in common: popular hymns and prayers in the vernacular, a devotional sermon, and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. These expressions of popular piety were rather rigidly controlled. The hymns and the prayers represented the best examples of the folk religion and piety that most of our ancestors had packed Into their shabby baggage as they came to this country as immigrants through the "golden door." In Ellis Island's beautiful and moving museum is a remarkable display of several religious articles of the immigrants — Jewish prayer stoles. Lutheran Bibles, and, of course, rosaries and novena books. 

From Michael Dubruiel's The Church's Most Powerful Novenas. 

A novena is a term used to describe a continuous praying of a formula nine consecutive times, usually nine consecutive days or once a week for nine weeks. The number nine derives from the time Mary and the Apostles waited for the coming of the Holy Spirit between Ascension and Pentecost. (from the Catholic Encyclopedia) This purse-sized prayer guide contains many of the Church's treasured petitions to Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saints, including Saint Anthony, Saint Peregrine and Saint Therese of Lisieux. A section devoted to American Saints includes a prayer to the North American Jesuit Martyrs. A new ?quick novena? from Blessed Teresa of Calcutta appears here for the first time in print. Illustrated throughout with art and religious images, each prayer in The Church's Most Powerful Novenas includes the history of that particular novena. A listing of shrines connected with novenas in the book is included. Although the practice of praying novenas has only been around since the 1600s, believers have embraced this commitment of devotion as a unique aspect of our Catholic identity.