"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you." — Matthew 7:7
What a Novena Is
A novena is nine consecutive days of prayer addressed to God through the intercession of a saint or in honour of a mystery of the Faith. The word comes from the Latin novem — nine — and the tradition is ancient, rooted in the nine days the Apostles and the Virgin Mary spent in prayer between the Ascension and Pentecost, waiting in the upper room for the coming of the Holy Spirit that Christ had promised.
Nine days of waiting. Nine days of prayer. Then the fire descended and the Church was born.
The novena tradition takes that pattern — persistent, expectant, specific prayer addressed over multiple days to the God who promises to those who ask that they will receive — and applies it to the particular needs of the person praying and the particular intercession of the saint being invoked. A novena is not a formula that compels God's response. It is a discipline of prayer — a commitment to return, day after day, to the same petition in the same confidence, long enough for the praying itself to form the person who is praying and open them to receive what they are asking for.
The novena to Saint Devasahayam follows the nine movements of his life — from birth through baptism through apostolate through imprisonment through martyrdom — because his life is itself a school of prayer. Each day places the person praying inside a specific moment of the saint's journey and asks his intercession from within that moment. The prayer is not only addressed to the saint from outside his story. It enters his story, walks inside it for nine days, and emerges — if the praying has been genuine — changed by it.
When to Begin
The novena can be begun at any time. There is no liturgical restriction, no season in which it is more or less appropriate. Bring your need to Saint Devasahayam whenever you carry it, and begin.
But there are times that carry particular resonance:
Begin on 5 January to conclude on 13 January — the vigil of his feast. Arrive at the feast day having prayed nine days through his life. Celebrate the feast on 14 January as the completion of the novena.
Begin on 14 January — the feast day itself — to conclude on 22 January. Begin at the feast and let the novena be the week that follows it.
Begin on 5 May to conclude on 13 May, arriving at the eve of the anniversary of his canonisation on 15 May 2022.
Begin on 5 May to conclude on 13 May, or begin on 14 May — the anniversary of his baptism — and let the nine days be a meditation on the meaning of your own baptism through the lens of his.
Any of these. Or none of them — begin today, because the need you are carrying is here today and the saint who intercedes is available today.
Before Each Day's Prayer
Begin each day with the Sign of the Cross and this short invocation:
Saint Devasahayam, you came to God through suffering and found Him sufficient for everything. I come to you with my need. Carry it before the God for whom you died.
Then read the day's meditation. Then pray the day's prayer. Then close with the approved prayer of the Diocese of Kottar, given at the end of this post.
DAY ONE: Birth and Beginnings
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you." — Jeremiah 1:5
On 23 April 1712, in Nattalam village in the kingdom of Travancore, a child was born into a Namboodhiri Brahmin family and given the name Neelagandan. His family was educated, respected, positioned at the apex of the social order. He would receive the best education the tradition could offer: Tamil, Malayalam, Sanskrit, the martial arts, the disciplines of a man who would be trusted with responsibility.
None of this looked like the preparation for a Christian martyr. It looked like the preparation for a Brahmin court official, which is what it was. But God, who sees the end from the beginning, was forming in this child the intelligence and the discipline and the sensitivity to justice that would one day receive the Gospel with the completeness of a man who had been prepared for it across thirty-three years without knowing it.
Saint Devasahayam, you were formed for God before you knew God. Pray for me, that I may trust that God is forming me in my own beginnings — in the circumstances of my birth and my family and my formation — for a purpose I may not yet see.
(State your intention.)
DAY TWO: The Providence of Suffering
"The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." — Job 1:21
The cattle died. The crops failed. The relatives were buried one after another. The rituals were performed and gave nothing. Neelakandan, the successful palace official, found himself stripped — not of his position, but of the consolations that had made the position feel sufficient. The world that had seemed adequate was suddenly and undeniably not.
This was not punishment. This was preparation. God was clearing the ground in which the seed of faith would be planted — removing the supports that had made the deeper questions unnecessary, making room for the encounter with the living God that the comfortable life would never have required.
Saint Devasahayam, you came to God through loss. Pray for me in my own losses — the things I have had taken, the supports that have been removed, the circumstances that have stripped away what I relied on. Let the stripping be preparation. Let the emptiness be the space where God plants something new.
(State your intention.)
DAY THREE: The Nine Months of Instruction
"Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." — Psalm 119:105
For nine months, Neelakandan walked twenty kilometres from Nagercoil to Vadakkankulam and back to sit with Fr. Buttari and receive the Faith. He studied the Scriptures, learned the Creed, received the writings of Beschi in classical Tamil, and was examined — not with examinations but with the tests of character that a confessor applies to a man whose conversion is going to cost him everything.
Nine months of gestation. Nine months of the seed being formed in the dark before the birth. He was becoming Devasahayam before he was called Devasahayam — the man who would stand at the font and say I am ready to endure crucifixion like Jesus willingly was being formed, day by day, in the twenty-kilometre journey and the hours of instruction and the returning home to the life he was about to give up.
Saint Devasahayam, you were formed in the Faith before you professed it. Pray for me in my own formation — in the learning, the prayer, the slow deepening of understanding that precedes the moments of decision. Give me the patience to be formed before I act, and the faithfulness to keep returning to the source of formation.
(State your intention.)
DAY FOUR: Baptism
"Do you not know that all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death?" — Romans 6:3
14 May 1745. The Holy Family Church, Vadakkankulam. Fr. Buttari poured the water three times. The name was spoken: Devasahayam — God has helped — the Tamil form of Lazarus, the man Christ raised from the dead. The old man died. The new man was born. The Brahmin became a Christian. The palace official became an apostle.
He had told Buttari he was ready for crucifixion. Buttari had hesitated — not from lack of faith in Neelakandan's sincerity but from the weight of what he was placing on him. He had tested, waited, examined. And then, convinced, he had baptised — placed into the hands of the man kneeling at the font the most dangerous and most wonderful thing the Church has to give: the life of grace, the death to self, the birth into the Body of Christ.
Saint Devasahayam, you were baptised at this font and walked out of it into a life that cost you everything. Pray for me, that I may live my own baptism as you lived yours — fully, without reservation, giving back to God the life He gave me at the font.
(State your intention.)
DAY FIVE: The Apostolate
"You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden." — Matthew 5:14
Four years. From his baptism in 1745 to his arrest in 1749. Four years of walking freely through the kingdom of Travancore, preaching the Gospel in Tamil, sitting at table with everyone — the Nadars, the Ezhavas, the people the Brahmin tradition had declared untouchable — and living, at every meal and in every encounter, the radical social implications of Galatians 3:28: there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, you are all one in Christ Jesus.
He converted people. He formed communities. He preached in the language of the land to the people of the land, and Gnanapu Theresa walked beside him, and what they were was the sermon before what they said was the sermon.
Saint Devasahayam, you preached the Gospel with your body as much as your words. Pray for me, that my life may be the sermon — that the way I eat and with whom, the way I work and how, the way I love and who I include, may be a proclamation of the Kingdom before I open my mouth.
(State your intention.)
DAY SIX: Arrest and the Stripping
"They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him." — Matthew 27:28
23 February 1749. The arrest. The parade of shame: backwards on the buffalo, the garland of Erukku, the executioner with the raised sword, the removal of the Ponool — the sacred thread of the Brahmin, the visible sign of the identity that the Brahmin tradition had given him. Stripped of the symbol. Stripped of the standing. Stripped of everything the world had recognised him by.
He did not resist. He did not recant. He had told Buttari he was ready for crucifixion, and the crucifixion was beginning — not with nails but with a buffalo and a garland and a crowd that had gathered to watch a man be humiliated out of a Faith he had chosen at the cost of everything.
Saint Devasahayam, you were stripped of everything the world valued and you did not reach back for it. Pray for me in the moments when I am stripped — of reputation, of comfort, of the things that defined me — that I may hold to what cannot be taken and release what must be given up.
(State your intention.)
DAY SEVEN: Three Years in Chains
"I have learned, in whatever situation I am, to be content." — Philippians 4:11
Three years. Tied to a tree. Legs chained. Thirty-two wounds. Inadequate food and water. Three communions in three years. The guards preventing access. The crowds coming anyway. The miracles: the lamb, the mute woman, the barren woman. The daily discipline of prayer in circumstances that made prayer both more difficult and more necessary than it had ever been.
"I am a sacrificial goat awaiting slaughter." He knew what was coming. He had foreseen his death eight days before the soldiers came for him. He used the time not to bargain or to despair but to pray — to become, in chains, more completely the man that the baptism had made him, more transparent to the God whose presence the chains could not obstruct.
Saint Devasahayam, you were most alive in your chains. Pray for me in my own chains — the circumstances I cannot escape, the sufferings I cannot shorten, the waiting that seems to have no end. Let the chains be the place where I am formed, as they were the place where you were completed.
(State your intention.)
DAY EIGHT: The Last Farewell
"I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come." — 2 Timothy 4:6
The last visit. De Lannoy with his wife Margaret and his son Johannes — the man who had opened the Book of Job for Neelakandan, coming to see what the Book of Job had produced. Gnanapu Theresa with her mother and her brother, breaking down in tears at what the chains had done to the man she had married. The godfather Gnanaprakasham. The priest who administered the Last Rites.
Devasahayam's words to them — the words preserved in the tradition across three centuries: "The Lord is calling me. Do not grieve. One day, we will be united again in His heavenly kingdom."
Not resignation. Certainty. The certainty of a man who had staked his life on the resurrection and was about to find out whether he was right.
Saint Devasahayam, you faced the end with the certainty of the resurrection. Pray for me, that I may live with that same certainty — that I may hold the people I love with open hands, trusting the God who made them and receives them, and face my own ending when it comes with the peace you showed at yours.
(State your intention.)
DAY NINE: The Mountain
"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." — John 12:24
14 January 1752. The soldiers came in the night. They carried him — he could not walk — through the jungle to Muttidichanparai. He knelt. He prayed. The marks of his knees and elbows are in the rock. Five bullets. Last words: Yesu, rakshikkane — Jesus, save me. The rocks fell from the mountain. The bell-rock rang. On the fifth day, the priests found the bones and the incorrupt tongue. The Te Deum was sung across the churches of Kanyakumari.
The grain fell. On the day of the harvest festival, the grain fell into the earth and died. And then the fruit — the 270 years of pilgrimage and intercession and answered prayer, the canonisation in Saint Peter's Square, the feast on the universal calendar, this novena, this day, this prayer.
Saint Devasahayam, you fell into the earth on the day of the harvest and your fruit has not stopped. I have prayed nine days through your life. I bring you now what I have been carrying — the need I began this novena with, the intention I have placed before you each day. Carry it before the God for whom you died. He heard you on the mountain. He hears you now.
(State your intention, fully, in your own words.)
Jesus, save me. Yesu, rakshikkane.
The Approved Prayer of the Diocese of Kottar
O Lord, you chose your servant Devasahayam to witness to your love in a heroic manner. Even in the midst of great suffering he maintained his faith and trust in you. Through his intercession, grant us the grace to follow the example of his life and to remain steadfast in faith.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Saint Devasahayam, pray for us.
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