Blessed Jordan and the Salve Procession

Day 7: Blessed Jordan and the Salve Procession

From the very beginning of the Order of Preachers, if things were going badly, what would the friars do? Then, as now, there was only one choice: to fly to the Bl. Virgin Mary for help. On one particularly acute occasion, a brother was being deeply afflicted by demonic temptation. Bl. Jordan directed the brothers to fly to her aid in a new way: by invoking her help in a solemn procession after Compline.

The brothers had recourse to their singular hope, the most powerful and loving Mary, and in her honour added after Compline a solemn procession with the Salve Regina and its prayer. Immediately, the appearances fled and those who were tormented were cured. A brother who was tormented by a demon at Bologna and another brother, the son of a king, who had gone insane at Paris, were fully delivered, and from then on everything began to go well for the Order. The crowds of people, the devotion of the clergy, the sweet tears, pious sighing and wonderful visions all show how pleasing to God and his Mother is this procession. As the brothers went out of choir to the altar of the Virgin, many saw, as they told the brothers, the Virgin herself with a multitude of heavenly citizens coming from heaven above. While the brothers invoked her with the words O dulcis Maria, she would bend over likewise to bless them, and as they went away she would go back to heaven with her entourage.

The friars grasped that the Mother of God and Queen of all the Saints was a powerful protectress in their trouble and need. We have never stopped invoking her help. Even today we continue the tradition of the Salve procession. May the Blessed Virgin Mary continue to guide the Order of Preachers. May Bl. Jordan obtain for us, under the Bl. Virgin’s intercession, many vocations for the Order of Preachers. Our Lady Queen of Preachers, pray for us!

Blessed Jordan of Saxony, worthy successor of St. Dominic, in the early days of the Order, your example and zeal prompted many men and women to follow Christ in the white habit of Our Holy Father. As patron of Dominican vocations, continue to stimulate talented and devoted men and women to consecrate their lives to God. Through your intercession, lead to the Order of Preachers generous and sacrificing persons, willing to give themselves fervently to the apostolate of Truth. Help them to prepare themselves to be worthy of the grace of a Dominican vocation. Inspire their hearts to become learned of God, that with firm determination they might aspire to be “champions of the Faith and true lights of the world.”

Day 8 of Novena (or Day 6)