The Our Lady of Guadalupe Novena

This is the prayer to Our Lady of Guadalupe that St. Pius X approved at an audience on August 18, 1908. The Holy See printed it in Spanish in its official collection of indulgenced prayers, the Enchiridion indulgentiarum (1952, no. 424); the English below is AngelGuard’s own translation of that text. It is short enough to learn by heart over the nine days, and it asks for what matters most: the faith kept, hope when life is bitter, a burning charity, and perseverance to the end. Say it once on each of the nine days, after naming your intention.

Her feast is December 12. To end on the eve, so that the feast itself is the day of thanksgiving, begin on December 3:

• Day 1: December 3
• Day 2: December 4
• Day 3: December 5
• Day 4: December 6
• Day 5: December 7
• Day 6: December 8, the Immaculate Conception (a holy day of obligation in the United States)
• Day 7: December 9, St. Juan Diego
• Day 8: December 10
• Day 9: December 11, the eve of the feast

If you would rather the ninth day be the feast itself, begin a day later, on December 4, and end with the Mass of December 12. Either is right. What matters is the nine days, not which one is last.

On a Saturday morning in December 1531, on his way to Mass, a poor man from a conquered people was stopped on a hill outside Mexico City by a young woman who spoke to him in his own language. She did not appear to the bishop, or to a Spanish nobleman. She went to Juan Diego. Scripture knows the pattern: “God chose the lowly things of the world, and the things that are despised” (1 Corinthians 1:28). Begin the novena by bringing your intention exactly as you are. Say the novena prayer, then:

She spoke to Juan Diego in Nahuatl, his own tongue, and she looked like his own people. At Pentecost the crowds in Jerusalem said the same thing in wonder: “How do we hear, everyone in our own native language?” (Acts 2:8). God does not ask us to become someone else before he will speak to us. Pray today for everyone who feels that the Church, or God, speaks a language they do not understand. Say the novena prayer, then:

After the bishop turned him away, Juan Diego went back and asked her to send someone more important, someone people would listen to. She sent him again. Mary had once said of herself that God “has looked at the humble state of his handmaid” (Luke 1:48), and she did not change her choice. Pray today for the task you feel least able to do, and for the grace to be sent anyway. Say the novena prayer, then:

Bishop Zumárraga was not wicked; he was careful, and he asked for a sign. God gave one, as he once did through Isaiah: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin will conceive, and bear a son” (Isaiah 7:14). Pray today for the people in your life who find it hard to believe, and for patience with your own doubts. Say the novena prayer, then:

His uncle Juan Bernardino fell dangerously ill, and Juan Diego, running at daybreak to fetch a priest, slipped round the other side of the hill so as not to be delayed by her. She met him on the road anyway. Her words to him, as Pope Francis has quoted them, are the heart of this devotion: “Am I not here, who am your Mother?” They echo God’s own promise through Isaiah: “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you” (Isaiah 66:13). Bring today whatever you have been trying to go around rather than through. Say the novena prayer, then:

Today is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, a holy day of obligation in the United States. The woman on the tilma is Mary as the Immaculate One, the “woman” of the first promise of redemption: “I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring” (Genesis 3:15). If you can, go to Mass today; the feast is explained on the Immaculate Conception page. Say the novena prayer, then:

Today is the memorial of St. Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, on the anniversary of the first apparition. After that December he asked the bishop’s permission to live beside the little chapel on Tepeyac, and spent the rest of his life there, caring for it and for the pilgrims who came. John Paul II canonised him in 2002, the first indigenous saint of the American continent. Jesus thanked the Father for exactly this kind of saint: “you hid these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to infants” (Matthew 11:25). Say the novena prayer, then:

She sent him to the top of a barren hill in winter, and he found roses blooming there. Isaiah had promised it long before: “The desert will rejoice and blossom like a rose” (Isaiah 35:1). Bring today the part of your life that looks most like a winter hilltop, where nothing has grown for a long time. Say the novena prayer, then:

When Juan Diego opened his tilma, the image of the woman who had spoken to him was on the cloth: standing before the sun, on the moon, her mantle full of stars, and, as the Vatican’s own biography of Juan Diego reads the black sash at her waist, expecting a child. It is the sign of Revelation: “a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet” (Revelation 12:1). She carries Christ to the people she has come to. Pray today for mothers, for the children they carry, and for every life at its beginning. Tomorrow is her feast; if you can, go to Mass. Say the novena prayer, then: