9 Days of Prayer 💕 Prepare Our Hearts – Saint Valentine’s Day Novena

JOIN ME? Let’s spend 9 days in the Upper Room of our hearts with both 💘Saints & Sinners making a spiritual bouquet of love as we prepare to celebrate the true meaning behind Saint Valentine’s Day:

📖 READ SCRIPTURE:

“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” – Psalm 51:10

💝 REFLECT:

Next to Jesus, David was God’s most Beloved son, and king. When we read the Psalms, we can see most clearly why: David’s Heart was always drawn to the Father. The deepest cry of David’s heart was to be to clean before God. Can we say this is our desire too? When we find ourselves with something coming between us and God, do we choose to cast away the thing that threatens our separation from Him? It’s ok if we do not. David is notorious for being swept away by his own desires. What makes our Father cherish David’s heart so, is not that it is perfect and without sin but that it is contrite and aware of its shortcomings. David knows the only One Heart in all the Universe he can truly trust and rely on is the Father’s. When we fall short of God’s desires for us, do we cry out with the same fervor of this Beloved King, “Lord, Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.”

🍎 Saint Wisdom:

“I heard these words in my soul: You are My spouse forever; your chastity should be greater than that of the angels, for I call no angel to such intimacy as I do you. The smallest act of My spouse is of infinite value. A pure soul has inconceivable power before God (Diary of Saint Faustina, 534, Divine Mercy)”

Saint Faustina didn’t white-knuckle her own way to purity.  She attained the grace of purity through prayer — particularly through prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary. No one has power to help free us from temptations of the flesh like Our Lady for two reasons. 

One, the Blessed Virgin Mary is the Mediatrix of All Graces. It is through her that Jesus chose to dispense his life, love and salvation to the whole world. Since we can only beat lust through grace, who better to obtain for us this grace of our Lord than the one through whom all His graces flow?

Second, the Blessed Virgin Mary knows exactly how we need to live in order to persist in purity. She never once suffered an attack against the virtue of purity. No one understands better than she the essential truth — that the only way we attain any virtue is through the grace of God. 

King David did not have the the benefit of having such a graceful Mother to guide him in the strength of the Holy Spirit, as Jesus did Mary, and so he stumbled many times. But you and I do. We don’t have to do this alone. All the saints AND angels are interceding for us in prayer with Jesus before the heart of Our Father.

🕊 LET US PRAY:

Father forgive me for the times my heart is far from you. I know now there is nothing greater for me apart from your love. Holy Spirit Come, kindle in me the fire of your love and I shall be recreated in your love. Restore to me the JOY of your salvation! Grant me the grace to be renewed by your Spirit and walk purely before you. Blessed Mother of Our Lord, Holy angels and saints of Heaven, especially Saint Valentine, pray for me, that I might not stumble but continually be found pure in heart before Our Father. And if I should fall, guide me back into His loving arms. In the Holy name of Jesus, King of My Heart, Amen.