Faith is Persistence: Results of my Latest Novena
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by Richard Poe Monday, March 17, 2014 1:18 pm Eastern Time |
Archives 16 Comments |
HAPPY St. Patrick’s Day! In keeping with my earlier promise, I am announcing the results of my latest novena to St. Jude. It spanned the first nine days of Lent, beginning Ash Wednesday, March 5 and ending Thursday, March 13, I prayed for a new beginning and a new life, asking specifically for a clear road ahead, a clear direction, and for the success of my company Heraklid.
As is so often the case (in my experience, anyway), the results of my novena were a little inconclusive. I am 100-percent certain that St. Jude answered my prayers. I’m just not sure how he answered them. Many things happened during those nine days, some happy, some very sad. I just don’t know how to interpret them. I don’t know what they all mean.
| READ ABOUT MY TEN-YEAR JOURNEY WITH ST. JUDE |
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In his book The Strangest Secret, Earl Nightingale wrote, “By being persistent, you’re demonstrating faith. Persistence is simply another word for faith. If you didn’t have faith, you’d never persist.”
Earl Nightingale is talking about faith through action. It doesn’t require that you “believe” in anything. It just requires that you do something.
Here’s what I mean. Suppose someone tells you, “Have faith!” That’s a nice sentiment, but how do you put it into practice? If you’re feeling discouraged or doubtful, how can you remove those bad thoughts and replace them with good ones? Brain surgery? Self-hypnosis? Behavior modification therapy?
Let’s face it. We do not always have the power to change our thoughts. But we can always change our actions.
Whatever your goal, just keep on striving for it, persistently, day in and day out, despite every doubt and discouragement. That is faith.
And so my walk with St. Jude continues. I will keep you posted!
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My Nine-Year Journey with St. Jude
Life itself is an amazing Journey. After being confronted with 5 recurrences of two different kinds of cancer and now facing economic ruin, I am unbelievably possibly facing cancer again since my oncologist palpated *another* tumor this past Monday. Many people ask me, “How do I keep my faith?” Well, for one, I know as ridiculous as it may sound, nothing occurs in my life I am not given the tools to which to deal with it. Nothing. Sometimes I do wish God didn’t think I was so resourceful. I know no matter what happens, I will be taken care of. I will be shown the way; the right people will come into my life to support me when I need help. All I have to do is: ask for help as you did. If I reframe my life over the last 27 years, a lot of it has been great. It all depends on my perceptions. I can choose to look at all the crap or I can choose to look at all the glory. Every time I fall down, I get up. It’s not easy, but as others have taught me: slow and steady (you are absolutely correct here, with persistence), I can keep going and succeed. And in the end, that’s what counts. Because much of life is essentially suiting up, showing up and doing your best–whatever that is–just for today. It also means knowing when to say, “No.”
Another essential element to survival had been ridding my life of those who are negative, who make me feel guilty, who don’t approve of the way I handle my chronic illness. I’ve learned to let those toxic relationships go. You can tell who these people are easily. You are very tired after being in their company, not refreshed. Encounters with them seem to pull the life force out of you. Be gone, I say!
It’s great to see you one year later on your Life Journey. I am so happy for your success. Wishing you the best.
I share the sentiments expressed in Richard’s views in his post and results along with AJ’s comment. Essentially, St. Jude answers our prayers in a way that will get us through our troubles. It doesn’t mean the answer will be swift or even in the way that we may have envisioned before starting the novena. What it gives us all is hope at a time when we have come to the brink of giving up on the situation before us. St. Jude has answered some prayers for me before completing the novena and gone way beyond my expectation. At other times, including right now, the results are still “pending” or as Richard said, “ambiguous”. That doesn’t mean the prayers weren’t or aren’t being answered. Like AJ says, sometimes I too wish God didn’t think I was so resourceful. My faith in St. Jude and God is strong even when I’m at a point where I have no faith in myself. Prayers to St. Jude have kept me looking for what is around the corner and looking forward. In closing I will reference 2 sports quotes. One by former basketball great Kevin McHale is “It’s never about the fall, it’s about the getting up.”. The other is by Steve Prefontaine: “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up”. May St. Jude be there for many others as well and best wishes for your future success.
My mother was a great devotee of st.jude. We received lots of blessings from st.jude. During my difficulties he was was my only hope. Here I would like to say few, I prayed to st,Jude on nine Fridays with fasting,he blessed my brother in law with govt.job; we could sell our property,which we were not able to sell for two years. He answered all our prayers on the eight Friday.thak you god.thank you st.jude
I too have severally asked st.Jude to intercede for me. Many tines I have messed up big time not knowing whether I will get God’s forgiveness or whether he will punish me for not obeying him. But throughout i always go to my Saint St.Jude requesting him to intercede for me so that God hears my prayer and answers it. Once this happens I end up forgetting about St. JUDE. This is the worst thing that I think I do. Today I am back at it again. Having messed up and wanting St.Jude to help clean my mess up (I’m sorry) .i am on day two of my novena, I am in a fix whereby whatever I am going through or the results of something I fearing could alter my life forever. I chose not to take the human way and solve my problem, knowing very well I have sufficient time to resolve it, I decided to go spiritual and St.Jude has always come to my rescue and I believe he will not let me down again. Some may think it’s foolish not having focused on the easy way out but then isn’t prayer even easier. ST. Jude please pray for me.
God, thank you for all the grace and favors which you have given me through the prayers of your Apostle, Jude Thaddeus. St. Jude, I thank you for your intercession in response to my prayers regarding my relationship. I will always be grateful to you and will spread to devotion to you. Be with us always so we may face our problems with courage and serenity.
I encourage devotion to St. Jude he never fails to help and answer our prayers.
St. Jude Novena ( Pray for 9 days straight at the same time)
St. Jude, glorious apostle, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the name of the traitor has caused you to be forgotten by many. But the Church honors and invokes you universally as the patron of hopeless cases, and of things despaired of. Pray for me who am so miserable. Make use, I implore you, of that particular privilege accorded you to bring visible and speedy help where help was almost despaired of. Come to my assistance in this great need that I may receive the consolation and help of Heaven in all my necessities, tribulations and sufferings, particularly … (Make your request here) and that I may bless God with you and all the elect throughout eternity.
I promise you o blessed St. Jude to be ever mindful of this great favor and I will never cease to honor you as my special and powerful patron and do all in my power to encourage devotion to you. Amen.
St. Jude, pray for us and for all who honor you and invoke your aid.
Pray 3 Our Fathers, 3 Hail Mary’s, 3 Glory be to God
So, I am facing a time where I honestly think everything is lost beyond hope. I am still young, but I already feel so old in my mind and soul. I lived the greatest experience in my life – and truly believe I found the love of my life, but I couldn’t stay with him because of a number of reasons completely unrelated to us.
I always had fought so much in my life, to conquer things that now, when compared to what I lived with him, do not matter at all. I fought again, the way I was used to, to try to get back with him, to pursue a new path in life.
Nothing happened. Even worse, I start lose faith in me, doubt who I am and what I am doing with my life. During this time, I was always asking God ‘why this?’ ‘why that?’ Always trying to see any reason in the mess I’m experiencing. I feel everything slipping through my fingers, to the point I am left with empty hands and a lost soul.
This morning, I woke up tired. I started talking with God, not asking for answers or explanations, but only told him “I accept everything it is happening to me, as hard as it is. I put my hands down, I quit fighting”. I just accepted – no explanations needed. And ask humbly for a way out. Any way out.
After that, St. Jude suddenly came into my mind, and I started to look for his prayers – that is why I found this blog. I read your experience with St. Jude, and one thing I made sure to learn was the need to publicise his graceful help. I prayed this morning. When i was praying I thanked for all those difficulties, as I was seeing them as an opportunity to grow and to be even more loved by the people that care about me. I decided to start a novena next week, when I’ll be back to my hometown and will be able to go to his shrine.
And lo and behold. I got a miracle just now. And I know this tiny positive answer is going to change this flood of negative news, and thoughts and events that were surrounding me.
I read something you wrote, and I can completely relate to it – “I had prayed for a new path, and a new path awaited me. But I was not yet ready to walk it. Before Sr. Jude could open a new door for me, he had to close all the old ones first.” I just feel that my new door is being opened right now.
Thank you so much for sharing.
Last month I started my 9-week novena to St. Jude asking him to intercede for me to help me with my relationship. And immediately, it all got better but he has not granted my prayer yet. Nevertheless, I am not losing hope. I will continue praying and going to church. I will be more persistent. Thank you God and St. Jude, my patron saint.
St. Jude, glorious apostle, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the name of the traitor has caused you to be forgotten by many. But the Church honors and invokes you universally as the patron of hopeless cases, and of things despaired of. Pray for me who am so miserable. Make use, I implore you, of that particular privilege accorded you to bring visible and speedy help where help was almost despaired of. Come to my assistance in this great need that I may receive the consolation and help of Heaven in all my necessities, tribulations and sufferings, particularly with mending my broken relationship between me and Bryan for the better and soon as a misunderstanding made us part ways right after the birth of our son and before we could marry. Please send him back home to our family so that through your grace and glory we can build a loving faithful faith filled , respectful, relationship and soon marriage,and that I may bless God with you and all the elect throughout eternity.
I promise you o blessed St. Jude to be ever mindful of this great favor and I will never cease to honor you as my special and powerful patron and do all in my power to encourage devotion to you. Amen.
St. Jude, pray for us and for all who honor you and invoke your aid.
Pray 3 Our Fathers, 3 Hail Mary’s, 3 Glory be to God
Thank you Oh blessed Saint Jude
AMEN
Saint Jude
I am so desperate and I beg for your intercession in my life and that of my family. My parents are two months behind on the rental and I fear that the landlord shall kick my children and I out (I pay the other half of the rental). Furthermore, my boss has not fully paid my salary from last month and has only paid a small portion to me this month, I am a widow with no additional income and I am so scared – PLEASE HELP ME AND MY FAMILY – PLEASE HELP US !! Please urgently send monies to both myself and to my family as the bank have repossessed my father’s motor vehicle and we received news yesterday that they wish to repossess her motor vehicle as well. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HELP US ! We are full of fear, anxiety, help us oh Saint Jude to cast out burdens on Christ on go free in love, peace, harmony, health and wealth. Thank you for taking to time to read my prayers. amen
St. Jude, loving the defender that has come to my aid. I was facing a very difficult situation. I was so lost and scared and didn’t know who to turn to. A friend told me about St. Jude and I started my 9 day Novena. I immediately felt a sense of relief within a couple of days. I started to no longer feel afraid. The outcome from St Jude really helped me. The person that keep bothering me hell and the situation was resolved with no repercussions. I believe in St Jude and I am grateful because he interceded on my behalf and saved me.
Dear saint Jude .please mend my relati9nship with RAB. He left because he wanted a break and could not see how he can be with me. He said it was tiring a d difficult. He has met somebody else and the last time we talked told me to go lookcfir somebody else. I was s9 heart broken. I am still heart broken. Please pray for me saint Jude. I know I messed up. He said he never felt loved by me and never felt like a priority. I took him for granted.I never seem to learn. Dear God please forgive me. Saint Jude pray for me that impossible as it looks RAB will come back to me and be happy with me…let me be his home. Pray for me saint Jude
I have been praying to St Jude through out my entire life. I’m now 48 yrs of age. Sometimes my special request was granted sometimes it was not. I don’t think that just because you didn’t receive what you want that doesn’t mean your request was not acknowledged. After all I feel some people expect too much from their own desires opposed to what God wants for you. I know life can be too much at times though we some how make it through most any situation. I think the key is devotion whether times are good or times of hardship….. Just keep praying! Don’t forget to give thanks for all that we DO have as there is always someone who is less fortunate.
I am dealing with breast cancer. Also, two criminals are renting rooms in the boarding house where I live. One is extremely dangerous to me. Please, pray for me.
N
Now I have heard about St Jude and I have decided to take work with him to help me bring my star and futune from God,
I am having serious financial challenge, mis management of funds and stagnancy in life. I am starting my novena to St Jude theadeus today and in nine days to come I hope to bring to you a miraculous news.
I came to know about the miracles of St. Jude through a friend, while my parents was facing health problems i prayed to St. Jude with good faith. He healed them. And now praying for my future spouse. Hope he will hear me. Thanks a lot St. Jude.
Unfortunately, after multiple novenas to St. Jude, my relationship with my former fiancé has deteriorated and I am on the brink of expulsion from medical school due to poor grades. Nevertheless, I thank St. Jude for his intercession, even though my path looks bleak.