Novena of Grace begins at Old Goa today

Gilbert D’Mello
Old Goa: The annual nine-day novena of Grace in honour of St Francis Xavier will commence on March 4 at the Bom Jesus Basilica in Old Goa.
Six masses will be celebrated daily at 6am, 7am and 8am. A retreat will also be conducted daily from 10am on the first floor of the Basilica. The Way of the Cross will be conducted in Konkani daily at 3.30pm inside the Basilica, which will be followed by Masses at 4.30pm, 5.30pm and 6.30pm (English).
This novena does not culminate in a feast, but on the last day of the novena (March 12) a high Mass will be celebrated at 9.30am, followed by a penitential procession to the Rosary Church, where another Mass will be celebrated, informed Fr Patricio Fernandes, superior of Bom Jesus Basilica.
According to a historical account contained in a book ‘St Francis Xavier and his shrine’ by P Rayanna, SJ, the genesis of the novena of Grace dates back to 1663, when the Viceroy of Naples ordered the consecration of the country to the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady. The entire town and its churches were decorated for the occasion. While a young priest in the Jesuit College, Marcello Mastrilli, was on December 11 directing a workman on a ladder, a hammer accidentally fell from the workman’s hand or belt and hit Mastrilli on his head. At first the gravity of the injury was not apparent, but soon the patient’s condition grew worse despite of the best medical treatment. On the night of January 3, 1634, when Mastrilli’s condition began to worsen, they had started a novena to St Francis Xavier, the patient promising the saint to go to the missions if he was cured. That night, when everybody was expecting the young priest to die, St Francis Xavier appeared to him in the grab of a pilgrim and cured him completely, telling him at the same time that he would die a martyr. Mastrilli’s health was immediately restores, he ate a good meal and wrote an account of his cure that very night.
News of this miracle soon spread all over Italy and beyond and since then the novena to St Francis Xavier became known as the novena of Grace. In Bom Jesus Basilica, Old Goa, the novena is held every year from March 4 to 12. The real impetus to this novena was given in 1967 by Fr George De Sa, then rector of the Basilica.