St Thérèse: the Diocesan Novena

Walk into any church in the Lancaster Diocese and you have a good chance of finding an image or statue of St Thérèse. This one, for example, is at St Joseph's Church in Wesham. From 26 July it is hoped that St Thérèse will become an even more prominent figure in the Diocese, as we ask her intercession duing a nine-week novena leading up to the visit. Each week there is an intention for prayer; a paragraph relating the intention to St Thérèse's life and message is given (this may be used on parish newsletters or in preaching) and an intercession for use at Mass is included. It is hoped that the novena will also be used at weekday Masses; this could be done by offering a daily prayer for the week's intention and also by using the prayer for the visit (see here) at the end of Mass. Details of the novena will be arriving through parish letterboxes before the weekend; the texts are now also posted online - in pdf format (here) and as a Microsoft Word document (here).