Day 2: The 1628 Gift

The second day of the Infant of Prague Novena turns to the historical moment that begins the modern Catholic devotion: the 1628 gift of the statue from Polyxena of Lobkowicz to the Discalced Carmelite friars of the Church of Our Lady Victorious in Prague. The story of this gift, with its surrounding circumstances, is a particular Catholic instance of the providential workings of grace through the small acts of charity that the Catholic faithful undertake in any age.

Today's invocation

O Most gracious Infant Jesus, I have recourse to You... (the full opening prayer)

Today's meditation

In 1628 the Discalced Carmelite friars of Prague were in serious distress. The Carmel of Our Lady Victorious had been founded only six years earlier, in 1622, in the aftermath of the Battle of White Mountain (1620), which had restored Catholic ecclesiastical authority to Prague after a long period of Hussite and Protestant influence. The friary had been small from the beginning, and the political and economic instability of the early Thirty Years' War had reduced the community to severe poverty.

Polyxena of Lobkowicz was the widow of the Czech Catholic chancellor Zdenek Vojtech Popel of Lobkowicz. She had inherited from her grandmother María Manrique de Lara a small wax-coated wooden statue of the Infant Jesus that had been a family Catholic heirloom for two generations, brought from Spain to Bohemia in 1556. Polyxena, hearing of the difficulties of the Carmelite friars, decided to give the statue to them. The recorded circumstance is that she gave it personally, with the words: "I give you the dearest possession I have. Reverence this little Image, and you will not lack anything."

The Catholic Carmelite tradition has preserved Polyxena's words with great care. The phrase I give you the dearest possession I have expresses the Catholic understanding of charity at its highest: not the giving of what is excess but the giving of what is most precious. The phrase reverence this little Image, and you will not lack anything expresses the Catholic conviction that devotion to the Christ Child is itself a means of providential care: the soul that loves the Lord in the form of the Infant Jesus is given, as a fruit of the love, the providence necessary for the soul's life.

The Carmelite friars accepted the gift with characteristic reverence. The statue was placed in the friary chapel and gradually became the principal object of the Catholic devotion of the parish. Within a few decades, the statue had been credited with numerous miracles of healing and providential intervention, and the Catholic devotion had begun to spread throughout central Europe. The Carmelite community was preserved through the rest of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) and through the subsequent difficulties of the Counter-Reformation period in Bohemia, and the friars themselves attributed the preservation to the Infant of Prague.¹

Today's intention

Today, in addition to your principal intention, ask the Infant of Prague for the Catholic gift of providential trust that Polyxena's words promised. Divine Infant Jesus, who blessed Polyxena and the Carmelite friars with providential care, bless me also. In the matter I have brought before You, give me the same providential trust that the Catholic faithful at Prague have known for four centuries.

If you are praying this novena for a particular financial or material need (a job, a recovery from financial loss, the success of a venture), today is an appropriate day to bring it specifically to the Infant of Prague. The saint's traditional patronage is one of the most generous in the Catholic tradition for these material needs.

Reflection

The Catholic spiritual tradition has long observed that the gift of the statue from Polyxena to the Carmelites is itself a Catholic example of the small charity that bears extraordinary fruit. Polyxena did not know in 1628 that her small gift would become, within two centuries, one of the principal Catholic devotional images of the world. She gave the statue to a struggling Carmelite community in her own city. The Lord, in the providential ordering of grace, used this small Catholic act of charity to begin a devotion that would bear fruit in millions of souls across the centuries since.

The Catholic faithful in our own time are called to similar small acts of charity, often without knowing what fruit the Lord will draw from them. The novena's second day is the appropriate Catholic moment to renew our willingness to give what is most precious, in the trust that the Lord knows how to bring fruit from the giving.

Closing prayers

Conclude with the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be.

Divine Infant Jesus, I trust in You. Through the small charity of Polyxena, You blessed Prague; through the small acts of our charity, bless us.

Footnotes

1. The history of the 1628 gift is preserved in the Carmelite chronicles of the Church of Our Lady Victorious in Prague. The standard modern reference is Cyril Papali, OCD, The Infant Jesus of Prague (1995). ↩