Why do we pray a 9-day surrender novena for a Church Building campaign?

Most if not all church building campaigns are accompanied by a community-wide prayer. The prayers are often particularized to petition the successes of the project's financing, good progress in the church's construction, and the well-being of all families involved. 

However, rather than following a standard format prayer that directly addresses the campaign, why are we praying a 9-Day novena? There are multiple reasons involved. Please allow me to explain.

First, I want to revisit some background about the timing of the prayer and the history of the Our Lady of Peace community. 

I introduced the campaign prayer on the 1st Sunday of Advent in 2022. I have been with the community for a full year since returning from language studies at Seoul, South Korea. Over the course of the year together, I had gotten familiar with many families from the community. While I witnessed great enthusiasm and cheerfulness from these families, I also discovered the extent of toil and suffering that many of these families were enduring. During this period, we were transitioning out of the COVID-19 epidemic but many families were gravely affected by dying family members, the economic turmoil, and the impact of ongoing social isolation. 

As the spiritual father of Our Lady of Peace, I felt a dire need to alleviate the burden of my parishioners, so they may continue glorifying our Lord by their lives. But this desire was impossible to fulfill by my own efforts. While I tried to accompany families and console them, it became clearer to me that the only true source of consolation and joy is Jesus Christ, and until I can get our parishioners to place their trust in Him alone, to surrender entirely to His Divine Providence, my efforts remain in vain. 

Earlier that fall, I attended a priest workshop at the Shrine of Our Lady of Torreciudad, Spain and while explaining my ministerial duties to another priest, he introduced me to the 9-Day Surrender Novena. Learning that the prayer was written by Fr. Dolindo Rutuolo, the confessor of St. Padre Pio, I trusted that this prayer has to be worthwhile. I meditated on each day's prayers and gradually felt tremendous peace knowing that the Lord is safekeeping my intentions. From this experience, I valued the prayer's potency. 

Returning to church and having discerned the campaign's motto, "Peace begins with victory," I was convinced that this is novena would be the roadmap towards achieving victory--victory from forgetting to supernaturalize our intentions, shouldering life-burdens independently, from compulsive vices and from doubting the power of God's intervention. 

While we build a beautiful sacred building to offer proper worship to our Lord, the church is ultimately composed of the faithful community united with the key desire of adoring God. If, by the time this new church campus is completed, our parishioners have grown in their personal surrender to God, I believe this campaign will have succeeded both structurally and communally. 

TL:DR - I decided to pray a novena for surrender rather than a direct prayer because I want to use the campaign as a platform to help our parishioners grow in faith and devotion. After our several rounds of praying the novena, I can say that three of my intentions have already been answered. Two of them are for the church building, and one of them is personal. I am grateful for the Lord's leading hand. "Lord Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything."

Holy Mary, Our Lady of Peace. Pray for us.