The Our Lady of Guadalupe Novena
Nine days with the Mother who asked, “Am I not here?”
The Our Lady of Guadalupe Novena is nine days of prayer from December 3 to December 11, ending on the eve of her feast on December 12. Each day, pray St. John Paul II’s prayer to Our Lady of Guadalupe, “O Immaculate Virgin, Mother of the true God and Mother of the Church…”, name your intention, and add a Hail Mary. AngelGuard gives the full prayer below, with a short reflection for each day on the story of Tepeyac.
Quick facts
The novena prayer: St. John Paul II’s prayer to Our Lady of Guadalupe
St. John Paul II’s prayer to Our Lady of Guadalupe is dated Mexico, January 1979, his first journey as pope. The Vatican publishes it in Spanish; the English below is AngelGuard’s own translation of that text, made for this page. It is a prayer to Mary as a mother and intercessor, and it ends, as she always does, with her Son. Say it once on each of the nine days, after naming your intention.
O Immaculate Virgin, Mother of the true God and Mother of the Church! From this place you show your mercy and your compassion to all who ask for your protection: hear the prayer we make to you with a child’s trust, and present it to your Son Jesus, our only Redeemer. Mother of mercy, Teacher of hidden and silent sacrifice, to you, who come out to meet us sinners, we consecrate on this day all our being and all our love. We consecrate to you also our life and our work, our joys, our illnesses and our sorrows. Grant peace, justice and prosperity to our peoples, for all that we have and all that we are we place in your care, our Lady and our Mother. We want to be wholly yours, and to walk with you the way of complete faithfulness to Jesus Christ in his Church: do not let go of us from your loving hand. Virgin of Guadalupe, Mother of the Americas, we pray to you for all the bishops, that they may lead the faithful along paths of intense Christian life, of love and of humble service to God and to souls. Look upon this immense harvest, and intercede that the Lord may pour out a hunger for holiness on the whole People of God, and grant abundant vocations to the priesthood and religious life, strong in faith and zealous stewards of the mysteries of God. Grant to our homes the grace to love and to respect life in its beginning, with the same love with which you conceived in your womb the life of the Son of God. Holy Virgin Mary, Mother of Fair Love, protect our families, that they may always be closely united, and bless the upbringing of our children. Our hope, look on us with compassion; teach us to go continually to Jesus, and when we fall, help us to rise again and return to him through the confession of our faults and sins in the sacrament of penance, which brings peace to the soul. We beg you to grant us a great love for all the holy sacraments, which are like the footprints your Son left us on earth. So, most holy Mother, with the peace of God in our conscience, with our hearts free from evil and from hatred, we will be able to bring to everyone true joy and true peace, which come from your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who with God the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen. (Then a Hail Mary, and: Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.)
If nine days of the full prayer is more than you can manage, the short form is enough: name your intention, pray one Hail Mary, and say “Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.” For the story behind every line, from Juan Diego’s first meeting to the image on the tilma, see Our Lady of Guadalupe.
When to start the Guadalupe novena: December 3 to 11
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.
Day 1 (December 3): The one she chose
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:
Holy Mary, you came first to the least of your children. Here I am, as I am, with what I carry: (name it). Take it to your Son. Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for me. Amen.
Day 2 (December 4): In his own language
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:
Lord, you speak to each of us in our own tongue. Speak to me today in words I can hear, and let me speak of you to others in words they can understand. Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us. Amen.
Day 3 (December 5): “Send someone else”
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 servant” (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:
Mother, like Juan Diego I would rather you sent someone else. Give me his courage to go back and try again, and let your Son’s strength be enough in my weakness. Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for me. Amen.
Day 4 (December 6): The bishop asks for a sign
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:
Lord, you are patient with those who ask for signs. Be patient with me, and with (name), who finds it hard to believe. Give us the sign that is your Son, and the grace to recognise him. Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us. Amen.
Day 5 (December 7): “Am I not here, who am your Mother?”
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:
Holy Mary, I have been taking the long way around, hoping not to be seen. Meet me on the road. Tell me again that you are here, and bring me to your Son, who heals. Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for (name). Amen.
Day 6 (December 8): The Immaculate Conception
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:
Father, you kept Mary free from every stain of sin to be the mother of your Son. By her prayers, free me from what still holds me, and make me holy as she is holy. Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us. Amen.
Day 7 (December 9): St. Juan Diego
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:
St. Juan Diego, humble messenger, you trusted her word and carried it faithfully. Pray for me, that I may be simple, obedient and faithful, and that my life may carry her Son to others. Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us. Amen.
Day 8 (December 10): Roses in December
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:
Lord, you make the desert bloom. Look on this dry ground in my life: (name it). Let something grow there again, in your time. Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mystical Rose, pray for me. Amen.
Day 9 (December 11, the eve of the feast): The woman clothed with the sun
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:
Holy Mary, Mother of the true God, you carried Christ to a people who did not yet know him. I have asked for nine days; I leave my request with you. Carry it to your Son, and carry him to me. Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us. Amen.
For the Advent that holds this novena, see Advent. Another Advent novena runs alongside this one: the St. Andrew Christmas novena, from November 30 to Christmas, one short prayer said fifteen times a day.
What is the Our Lady of Guadalupe novena?
The Our Lady of Guadalupe Novena is nine days of prayer that end on the eve of December 12, the day in 1531 when Juan Diego opened his cloak in front of the bishop of Mexico and the roses fell out onto the floor. It is one of the most widely prayed novenas in the Americas, and in Mexican and Mexican-American parishes it is often prayed together in church, night after night, building to the vigil of the feast. Its nine days happen to hold two other feasts that belong to the same story. December 8, the sixth day, is the Immaculate Conception, and the woman on the tilma is Mary as the Immaculate One: standing on the moon, clothed with the sun. December 9, the seventh day, is the memorial of St. Juan Diego, on the anniversary of the first apparition. The novena walks through the account almost day by day. What it asks is simple. Our Lady of Guadalupe is invoked above all as a mother: for mothers and the children they carry, for families, for the poor and for those who are far from home, and for anything a child would bring to a mother. The words she is remembered for saying to Juan Diego, when he was afraid for his dying uncle, are the heart of the devotion: “Am I not here, who am your Mother?” Like every novena, it is a way of persevering in prayer, not a formula. Mary is asked to pray; it is God who answers, and the devotion to Guadalupe, like every Marian devotion the Church approves, leads to her Son.
How to pray it
Begin on December 3. Pray at the same time each day if you can, and keep one intention for all nine days. Each day: make the Sign of the Cross, read the short reflection for the day if you have time, name your intention, pray St. John Paul II’s prayer below, and end with a Hail Mary and the invocation “Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.” The whole takes about five minutes. If you can, go to Mass on December 8, which is a holy day of obligation in the United States, and on the feast itself, December 12. Many parishes keep a vigil on the night of the 11th with Las Mañanitas sung before dawn; if yours does, it is a beautiful way to end the novena. If you miss a day, carry on and add it at the end. A novena is nine days of faithfulness, not a chain that breaks. And if you are praying for someone else, a mother expecting a child or a family member far away, tell them: knowing that someone is praying for you for nine days does its own good.
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