Novena to St. Benedict

March 21st.

1. By that extraordinary love which you, O great patriarch St. Benedict, evinced for retirement and mortification when you concealed yourself at the age of fifteen in the wilderness, where you were not content to feed solely on roots and to sleep on the bare grounds, but also tormented your body with a rough hair shirt which you wore till your death: obtain for us all the grace to abhor all the pomps and vanities of the seductive world, and to apply ourselves continually to the abnegation of our own will and the mortification of the flesh. Gloria.

2. By the heroic intrepidity with which you, O great Patriarch St. Benedict, despised all the artifices of the devil, who attempted to drive you from your solitude, and by the complete victory which you obtained over your evil imaginations by casting yourself naked amidst thorns and briars: obtain for us all the grace to rise superior to all the assaults of the infernal enemy, and to be always ready to endure any evil rather than to stain our souls with a single sin. Gloria.

3. By the generosity with which you, O great Patriarch St. Benedict, pardoned your subjects, who, after having chosen you superior, began to persecute you in the most unworthy manner, even attempting to poison you: obtain for us all the grace to suffer in peace the persecutions and contempt with which it shall please God to visit us during the few days of this our mortal life. Gloria.

4. By that truly apostolic zeal with which you, O great Patriarch, St. Benedict! broke the idols in pieces, pulled down the temples, and burnt the woods, which retained the inhabitants of Monte Cassino in the darkness of Paganism; and established the faith of Jesus Christ, through the whole neighbourhood, and by the erection of your monastery; and who laid the foundation of that great order which has given to the Holy See forty Popes, to the sacred college more than two hundred Cardinals, to Holy Church thousands of canonized saints, and an infinite number of labourers in literature and science: obtain for us all, grace to employ our powers, to advance the temporal as well as spiritual wellbeing of our brethren. Gloria.

5. By that supernatural light by which you, great Patriarch, St. Benedict, revealed to Totila, King of the Goths, his success for nine years, and his death in the tenth, and by that illumination by which you revealed to your religious the time at which you would pass to eternity: obtain for us all the grace to be always, like you, humble, mortified, and fervent, and that we may receive from God the lights needful to guide us in the way of sanctity, and may continually and diligently seek our eternal salvation. Gloria.