Christian Pure

What Is a Novena? Nine Days of Prayer and Where They Come From

Christian Pure Team

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Published

Summary

  • A novena is a Catholic practice of praying for nine days in a row, usually for one particular need or to get ready for a feast, and the word is simply the Latin for nine.
  • Catholic writers take the nine from the apostles praying in the upper room after the Ascension, though Acts never counts nine days, and the ancient Romans also kept nine days of sacrifice and of mourning.
  • Pope Leo XIII ordered the Pentecost novena in every Catholic parish on 9 May 1897, and the other best-known novenas are the Divine Mercy from Good Friday, St. Jude before 28 October, and Christmas from 16 to 24 December.
  • Catholics pray novenas all through the year, the Church of England’s 2026 resources for Thy Kingdom Come include one, and we did not find a plain word about them from any Orthodox church.
  • The Lutheran Augsburg Confession rejects asking the saints for help, the Presbyterian Westminster Confession keeps worship to God and to what Scripture prescribes and rules out prayer for the dead, and neither mentions novenas.
  • A novena can be turned into a formula, and the Marian Fathers and the Catechism warn us against that, because there are no guarantees and God is no instrument to be used.
  • Prayed rightly, it is what they did in the upper room, asking and staying until the promise was kept.

A novena is a Catholic practice of praying for nine days in a row, usually for one particular need or to get ready for a feast, and the word is simply the Latin for nine, novem. The old Catholic Encyclopedia of 1911 calls it “a nine days’ private or public devotion in the Catholic Church to obtain special graces.” The first people said to have prayed this way were the apostles, and they had a promise to go on and…

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Bibliography (Click to show)
  • Bible: King James Version (public domain), Acts 1:1-14, Acts 2:1-4, Luke 11:5-10, Luke 18:1-8, Luke 22:41-44, Luke 24:49-53 and Matthew 6:5-8, from BibleGateway.
  • Joseph Hilgers, “Novena,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 11 (1911), New Advent: newadvent.org/cathen/11141b.htm
  • Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy: Principles and Guidelines (Vatican City, December 2001), nos. 21, 103, 154, 155, 189: vatican.va
  • Pope Leo XIII, Divinum illud munus, encyclical on the Holy Spirit, 9 May 1897, sections 12 and 13: vatican.va
  • Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 2734-2741 (Filial Trust): vatican.va
  • Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, “What are Novenas?” (from Marian Helper, Fall 1993): thedivinemercy.org
  • Marian Fathers, “The Divine Mercy Novena of Chaplets”: thedivinemercy.org
  • Robert Stackpole, “To Console the Heart of the Merciful Savior,” The Divine Mercy, 31 October 2022: thedivinemercy.org
  • National Shrine of St. Jude, “A History and Guide to Novena Practices”: shrineofstjude.org
  • FOCUS, “How to Pray: The Novena to the Holy Spirit” (3 June 2025): focus.org
  • The Church of England, “Thy Kingdom Come” (resources page, 2026): churchofengland.org; Thy Kingdom Come, home page (2027 dates): thykingdomcome.global
  • Brian Kusek, “Christmas Novena”, Saint Mary’s Today, Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, 18 December 2023: today.smumn.edu
  • The Augsburg Confession (1530), Article XXI, Book of Concord: bookofconcord.org
  • The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chapter 21, Orthodox Presbyterian Church: opc.org

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