Day 5: Trust in the darkness

The fifth day stands at the midpoint of the novena. Many Catholics praying through the Saint Jude Novena reach this day with no outward sign of change in the matter for which they are praying. Today's meditation is for that exact moment: the trust the soul must keep when no light is visible, and the intercession of Saint Jude in the very darkness where the Lord seems silent.

Today's meditation

The Catholic spiritual tradition has a name for this moment: the night of faith. Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591) develops the concept at length in The Dark Night of the Soul, but the experience is older than the technical term. It is described in the Old Testament book of Lamentations, in the Gospel scene at Gethsemane, in the Cross itself, and in the early days of the Saint Jude Novena prayed at the bedside of someone gravely ill.

The night of faith is not the absence of God. It is the presence of a God who is too large for the categories the soul has been using to perceive Him. "My ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:9). When we cannot see the answer to our prayer, it is not because the Lord has gone silent; it is because the answer is being prepared in a depth that our daylight cannot reach.

Today's intention

Today, before bringing your intention to Saint Jude, name aloud what you have not seen change since you began this novena. Saint Jude, after five days I do not yet see the answer. Then bring the intention again with the same confidence as on Day 1. Then pray:

Most holy Apostle, Saint Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the Church honors and invokes you universally, as the patron of difficult cases, of things almost despaired of. Pray for me, who am so miserable. Make use, I implore you, of that particular privilege accorded to 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 consolations and succor of heaven in all my necessities, tribulations, and sufferings, particularly (name your request), and that I may praise God with you and all the elect forever. I promise you, O blessed Saint Jude, to be ever mindful of this great favor, to always honor you as my special and powerful patron, and to gratefully encourage devotion to you. Amen.

Reflection

Saint Jude himself walked in the night of faith. He saw his Master arrested, beaten, and crucified. He fled with the others. He spent the long Saturday between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection in what must have felt like the absolute extinction of every hope he had ever placed in Jesus. We forget how dark that Saturday was. We know how the story ends; he did not.

When we pray to Saint Jude on the fifth day of the novena, we pray to a man who knew exactly what it is like to wait in the dark. His intercession comes to us informed by his own experience of the silence of the tomb. He knows what it is to have entrusted everything to Christ and to be staring at apparent ruin. He also knows what came on the third day: the empty tomb, the upper room, the breath of the risen Lord on his face, the Pentecost flame.

The Saint Jude Novena does not promise that the answer will come on Day 9. It promises that the One in whose name we are praying is the same Christ who came to Saint Jude in the upper room on the evening of the Resurrection and said "Peace be with you" (John 20:19). The peace He gives is not contingent on the resolution of the outward matter. It is the peace of the risen Lord standing in the room where the door is locked.

If the night is dark today, persevere. The Apostle is praying with us, and the One who is able to keep you from falling (Jude 24) is Himself the answer to our prayer, whether or not we have yet been given to see it.

Closing prayers

Pray three times each: the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be.

Saint Jude, who walked in the silence of Holy Saturday, intercede that we may trust through the night.