Day 2, Novena to Mary, Source of Joy for the Little Ones. Extracts from Papa Francisco's exhortation on the joy of the Gospel, Evangelii Gaudium: "The proposal is to live at a higher level, but not with less intensity: “Life grows by being given and weakens in isolation and comfort. In fact, those who enjoy life the most are those who leave the safety of the shore and are passionate about the mission of communicating life to others”. When the Church calls for the task of evangelizing commitment, she merely indicates to Christians the true dynamism of personal fulfilment: “Here we discover another profound law of reality: that life is obtained and matures in the measure to which it is offered for the lives of others. This is, in the end, the mission”. Consequently, an evangelizer should not permanently have on a funeral face! Let us recover and increase our fervour, the “sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing, even when we must sow in tears … May the world of our time - which is searching, sometimes with anguish, sometimes with hope - be able to receive the Good News, not from evangelizers who are sad and discouraged, impatient and anxious, but from ministers of the Gospel whose lives radiate fervour, who have first themselves received the joy of Christ”" Music by Joe Zambon. For much more, visit Totus2us.com which is dedicated to Our Lady and inspired by our holy fathers - Blessed John Paul II, Papa Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.

Day 1, Novena to Mary, Source of Joy for the Little Ones. Extracts from Papa Francisco's exhortation on the joy of the Gospel, Evangelii Gaudium: "I invite every Christian, in whatever place and situation they may find themselves in, to renew their personal encounter with Jesus Christ this very day or, at least, to make the decision to let themselves encounter Him, to seek him every day without ceasing. There is no reason why anyone can think that this invitation is not for them, because "no one is excluded from the joy brought by the Lord". The Lord does not disappoint anyone who takes this risk, and when someone takes a small step towards Jesus, one discovers that He was already awaiting ones arrival with open arms. This is the moment to say to Jesus Christ: “Lord, I have let myself be deceived, in a thousand ways I have fled from your love, yet I am here once again to renew my covenant with you. I need you. Redeem me once again Lord, accept me once more into your redeeming arms.” It does us so much good to return to Him when we are lost! I emphasize once again: God never tires of forgiving us, it is us who tire of asking for his mercy. The one who invited us to forgive “seventy times seven times” (Mt 18:22) gives us the example: He forgives seventy times seven times. He comes back to carry us on his shoulders time after time. Nobody can take away from us the dignity that this infinite and unwavering love confers upon us. He enables us to lift our heads up again and start anew, with a tenderness that never disappoints us and that can always restore our joy. Let us not flee from the resurrection of Jesus, let us never give up, come what may. Nothing can be more than his life which urges us forward!" Music by Joe Zambon. For much more, visit Totus2us.com which is dedicated to Our Lady and inspired by our holy fathers - Blessed John Paul II, Papa Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.

Day 9, Novena to Mary, Mother of our faith. Quote from Papa Francisco's encyclical on faith, Lumen Fidei: " In the family, faith accompanies all the stages of life, starting with childhood: children learn to trust in the love of their parents. This is why it is important that parents cultivate in the family common practices of the faith, which accompany the maturation of the faith of their children. Above all young people, who go through a stage of life so complex, rich and important for their faith, must feel the closeness and attention of the family and of the ecclesial community on their pathway of growth in faith. We have all seen how, at the World Youth Days, young people show the joy of faith, the commitment to live a faith ever firmer and more generous. Young people have the desire for a great life/desire a life that is great. The encounter with Christ, letting oneself be caught and guided by his love, widens the horizon of existence, gives it a solid hope which does not deceive. Faith is not a refuge for people without courage, but the expansion of life. It makes one discover a great call, the vocation to love, and assures one that this love is trustworthy, that it is worth surrendering oneself to it, because its foundation is found in God's faithfulness, stronger than our every fragility." Music performed by seminarians Daniel Weatherley and John Watts. For much more, visit Totus2us.com which is dedicated to Our Lady and inspired by our holy Papas - Blessed John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.

Day 8, Novena to Mary, Mother of our faith. Quote from Papa Francisco's encyclical on faith, Lumen Fidei: " In the family, faith accompanies all the stages of life, starting with childhood: children learn to trust in the love of their parents. This is why it is important that parents cultivate in the family common practices of the faith, which accompany the maturation of the faith of their children. Above all young people, who go through a stage of life so complex, rich and important for their faith, must feel the closeness and attention of the family and of the ecclesial community on their pathway of growth in faith. We have all seen how, at the World Youth Days, young people show the joy of faith, the commitment to live a faith ever firmer and more generous. Young people have the desire for a great life/desire a life that is great. The encounter with Christ, letting oneself be caught and guided by his love, widens the horizon of existence, gives it a solid hope which does not deceive. Faith is not a refuge for people without courage, but the expansion of life. It makes one discover a great call, the vocation to love, and assures one that this love is trustworthy, that it is worth surrendering oneself to it, because its foundation is found in God's faithfulness, stronger than our every fragility." Music performed by seminarians Daniel Weatherley and John Watts. For much more, visit Totus2us.com which is dedicated to Our Lady and inspired by our holy Papas - Blessed John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.

Day 7, Novena to Mary, Mother of our faith. Quote from Papa Francisco's encyclical on faith, Lumen Fidei: "Two other elements are essential to/in the faithful transmission of the memory of the Church. First, the Lord’s Prayer, the Our Father. In it the Christian learns to share in the same spiritual experience as Christ and begins to see with the eyes of Christ. Starting from the One who is Light from Light, from the Only Begotten Son of the Father, we too know God and can light in others the desire to draw near to Him. Just as important is the connection between faith and the Decalogue. Faith, we have said, appears like a pathway, a road to be taken/followed/tread, open to the encounter with the living God. For this reason, to the light of faith, of total entrustment to God who saves, the Decalogue acquires its deepest truth, contained in the words which introduce the ten commandments: I am the Lord your God who has brought you out of the land of Egypt" (Ex 20, 2). The Decalogue is not a set of negative precepts, but of concrete directions for leaving the desert of one's self-referential "I", closed in on itself, and entering into dialogue with God, letting oneself be embraced by his mercy so as to bear/bring his mercy. Faith confesses thus the love of God, origin and support/upholder of all, lets itself be moved by this love so as to walk towards the fullness of communion with God. The Decalogue appears as the pathway of gratitude, of the response of love, possible because, in faith, we are open to the experience of God's transforming love for us. And this pathway receives a new light from what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount (cf Mt 5-7)." Music performed by seminarians Daniel Weatherley and John Watts. For much more, visit Totus2us.com which is dedicated to Our Lady and inspired by our holy Papas - Blessed John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.

Day 6, Novena to Mary, Mother of our faith. Quote from Papa Francisco's encyclical on faith, Lumen Fidei: "The sacramental nature of faith finds its highest expression in the Eucharist. It is the precious nourishment of faith, the encounter with Christ present in a real way with the supreme act of love, the gift of his very Self which generates life. In the Eucharist we find the intersection of the two axes on which faith treads its pathway. On one side, the axis of history: the Eucharist is the act of memory, the actualisation of the mystery, in which the past, as the event of the death and resurrection, shows its capacity to open up to the future, of anticipating the final fullness. The liturgy reminds us with its hodie, the "today" of the mysteries of salvation. From another side, there is the axis which leads from the visible world towards the invisible. In the Eucharist we learn to see the depth of the real. The bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ, who makes himself present in his paschal pathway towards the Father: this movement introduces us, both and soul, into the movement of all that is created towards its fullness in God." Music performed by seminarians Daniel Weatherley and John Watts. For much more, visit Totus2us.com which is dedicated to Our Lady and inspired by our holy Papas - Blessed John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.

Day 5, Novena to Mary, Mother of our faith. Quote from Papa Francisco's encyclical on faith, Lumen Fidei: "Christian faith, inasmuch as it proclaims the truth of God's total love and opens to the power of this love, arrives at the deepest centre of the experience of every man, who comes to the light thanks to love and is called to love so as to remain in the light. Motivated by a desire to illuminate the whole of reality starting from the love of God made manifest in Jesus, in seeking to love with this same love, the first Christians found in the Greek world, with its hunger for truth, a suitable partner for dialogue. The encounter of the Gospel message with the philosophical thought of the ancient world constituted a decisive passage for the Gospel to come to all peoples, and encouraged a fruitful interaction between faith and reason, which went on developing through the centuries, down to the present day. Blessed John Paul II, in his encyclical Letter Fides et ratio, showed how faith and reason each strengthen the other. When we find the full light of Jesus's love, we discover that in each of our loves there was present a glimmer of that light and we understand what was its ultimate goal. And, at the same time, the fact that our love bears with it a light, helps us to see the pathway of love towards the fullness of the total self-gift of the Son of God for us. In this circular movement, the light of faith illuminates all our human relationships, which can be lived in union with the love and tenderness of Christ." Music performed by seminarians Daniel Weatherley and John Watts. For much more, visit Totus2us.com which is dedicated to Our Lady and inspired by our holy Papas - Blessed John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.

Day 4, Novena to Mary, Mother of our faith. Quote from Papa Francisco's encyclical on faith, Lumen Fidei: "If love needs truth, truth also needs love. Love and truth cannot be separated. Without love, the truth becomes cold, impersonal, oppressive for the concrete life of the person. The truth which we seek, that which offers meaning to our steps, illuminates us when we are touched by love. The one who loves understands that love is an experience of truth, that it opens our eyes to see all of reality in a new way, in union with the person loved. On this meaning, Saint Gregory the Great wrote that "amore ipse notitia est", love itself is a knowledge, bears with it a new logic. It is a relational way of looking at the world, that becomes shared knowledge, a vision in the vision of another and a common vision upon all things. William of Saint Thierry, in the Middle Ages, follows this tradition when he comments on a verse in the Song of Songs in which love says to the beloved: Your eyes are the eyes of a dove (cf Song 1, 15). The two eyes, explains William, are believing reason and love, which become a single eye so as to reach the contemplation of God, when the intellect/intelligence is made "intellect of an illuminated love."" Music performed by seminarians Daniel Weatherley and John Watts. For much more, visit Totus2us.com which is dedicated to Our Lady and inspired by our holy Papas - Blessed John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.

Day 3, Novena to Mary, Mother of our faith. Quote from Papa Francisco's encyclical on faith, Lumen Fidei: "Now, the death of Christ reveals the total reliability of God's love in the light of his Resurrection. As the risen one, Christ is the reliable witness, worthy of faith (cf Ap 1, 5; Heb 2, 17), the solid support for our faith. "If Christ is not risen, your faith is in vain", affirms St Paul (1 Cor 15, 17). If the Father's love had not made Jesus rise from the dead, if it had not been able to restore life to his body, then it would not be a fully reliable love, capable of illuminating even the darkness of death. When St Paul speaks of his new life in Christ, he refers to "faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal 2:20). This "faith in the Son of God" is certainly the faith of the Apostle of the gentiles in Jesus, but also presupposes the reliability of Jesus, which is based, yes, on his love even unto death, but also in his being the Son of God. Precisely because Jesus is the Son, because he is rooted in an absolute way in the Father, he was able to conquer death and make life shine forth in its fullness. Our culture has lost the perception of this concrete presence of God, of his action in the world. We think that God is found only in the beyond, in another level of reality, separated from our concrete relationships. But if this were so, if God were incapable of acting in the world, his love would not be truly powerful, truly real, and would then not even be true love, capable of accomplishing this happiness which it promises. To believe or not to believe in Him would thus be a totally indifferent matter. Christians, on the contrary, confess the concrete and powerful love of God, which truly works in history and determines its final destiny, a love which has made itself encounterable, which has fully revealed itself in the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ." Music performed by seminarians Daniel Weatherley and John Watts. For much more, visit Totus2us.com which is dedicated to Our Lady and inspired by our holy Papas - Blessed John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.

Day 2, Novena to Mary, Mother of our faith. Quote from Papa Francisco's encyclical on faith, Lumen Fidei: "Faith opens the pathway before us and accompanies our steps in history. This is why, if we want to understand what faith is, we must recount its course, the way of believers, testified in the first place in the Old Testament. A unique place belongs to Abraham, our father in faith. In his life an overwhelming fact happens: God gives him the Word, reveals himself as a God who speaks and who calls him by name.Faith is linked to hearing. Abraham does not see God, but hears his voice. In this way faith assumes a personal character. God is thus not the God of a place, nor the God tied to a specific sacred time, but the God of a person, (indeed) the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, capable of entering into contact with man and establishing with him a covenant. Faith is the response to a Word which summons personally, to a You who calls us by name." Music performed by seminarians Daniel Weatherley and John Watts. For much more, visit Totus2us.com which is dedicated to Our Lady and inspired by our holy Papas - Blessed John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Pope Francis.