Novena App: A Review

I'm a novena fangirl. A novena's a prayer that's typically spread out over nine days. Sometimes you pray the same prayer all nine days, and other times there are unique prayers for each day. Novenas can be modified for nine hours (or minutes, I suppose) and even for nine months.

For me, novenas are a focused and intense way to pray for someone or some intention. They have a beginning and an end, as opposed to the open-ended promise that "I'll pray for you" which I forget within two days or two hours, depending on the day.

Right before my iPad was unceremoniously (and illicitly) baptized with Kool-Aid, I was in the process of falling in love with a new app: Novena. Unfortunately, it's only on iOS right now, but I hope for everyone else's sake that an Android version comes out soon.

It's a simple enough concept, and one that many other apps include: pray a novena for a certain intention and/or asking for a certain saint's intercession.

What I love about this app:

It's pretty. Not only do you have saints (in and of themselves a heavenly crowd), but you have attractive artwork and intuitive design.

There's as much or as little as you'd like. Each saint has some history...

 ...though you can skip through that and get right to the praying.

What's been put together is a treasury, with the ability to share it for yourself as favorites or with others through various social networks or good ole email.

It's close to perfect.

Rumor has it that there will be push notifications or some sort of alarm available in a future update (because I can't be the only one who needs some sort of reminder, right). And yes, that's the only beef I have. It worked on my non-iOS 6.0 iPad, which is a nod to those of us who make our devices last.

I consider $2.99 pretty steep for an app, but given what I've seen and experienced of this one, I recommend it and will likely be gifting it to some loved ones in my life.

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Copyright 2013 Sarah Reinhard