Novena
The Our Lady of Lourdes Novena
Nine days with Our Lady of Lourdes, February 2 to 10, for the sick and the people who care for them, and for any intention of your own.
Pray the Our Lady of Lourdes novena ›
The Our Lady of Lourdes novena is prayed for nine days, February 2 through February 10, ending the day before her feast on February 11, the World Day of the Sick. Each day has its own prayer from an 1876 novena printed for the sick, a short Douay-Rheims reading and a line on the day’s theme.
Quick facts
- Prayed to:
- Our Lady of Lourdes
- Feast day:
- February 11, Our Lady of Lourdes and the World Day of the Sick
- When to pray:
- Begin on February 2 and pray through February 10, the eve of Our Lady of Lourdes, whose feast is February 11.
- Prayed for:
- The sick and the people caring for them: healing if God wills it, patience and peace whatever comes, and an intention of your own, kept for the whole novena.
The Our Lady of Lourdes novena prayer for every day
The Our Lady of Lourdes novena in the 1876 book closes with this prayer, and it suits the end of each day as well. It is an older wording of the prayer most people know as the Lourdes novena prayer, the one that begins “O ever Immaculate Virgin, Mother of mercy, Health of the sick”.
O Immaculate Virgin,
Mother of mercy,
Health of the weak,
Refuge of sinners,
Comforter of the afflicted,
Thou knowest our needs and our sufferings. Deign to look on us pityingly, and to help us bountifully. By appearing in the grotto of Lourdes, thou hast shown that thou didst wish it to be a privileged spot, whence thou shouldst dispense thy favors with special abundance. Already, very many have there found the cure both of their souls and of their bodies.—Though we are so far distant from that holy place, yet even from afar we call to thee, O dear Lady of Lourdes, and ask that we may be sharers in those blessings. Hear our humble prayer, O loving and beloved Mother; help us in our bodily needs and spiritual infirmities; may our gratitude for thy favors make us still more careful to imitate thy virtues during all our life, that so we may one day come to share with thee in the glory of heaven. Amen.
Our dear Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.
The words are copied from Novena to Our Lady of Lourdes, printed for the sick and afflicted by Murphy & Co. of Baltimore in 1876, pages 55 and 56, with the book’s thee and thou and its own capitals. Where later versions say “Health of the sick”, this one says “Health of the weak”. Its line about cures at the grotto repeats what pilgrims were reporting in the shrine’s first years. The Church examines such cures with great care and has recognized comparatively few as miracles; the line itself puts the cure of souls before the cure of bodies, and the prayer promises no cure to anyone who says it.
February 2 to 10
The Our Lady of Lourdes novena ends on February 10, the day before her feast, so it starts on February 2, the Presentation of the Lord, when many parishes bless candles. Day by day:
- Day 1: February 2, the Presentation of the Lord
- Day 2: February 3, St. Blaise
- Day 3: February 4
- Day 4: February 5, St. Agatha
- Day 5: February 6
- Day 6: February 7
- Day 7: February 8
- Day 8: February 9
- Day 9: February 10, the eve of the feast
Others begin on February 3 and finish on the feast itself, as the Sanctuary of Lourdes has done for its own novena; nothing in the prayers depends on which start you choose.
When Lent begins during the novena. Ash Wednesday can come as early as February 4, so in some years Lent opens inside the nine days, and now and then on February 11 itself. On Ash Wednesday keep the fast and the abstinence as well as the novena. When it falls on February 10, the last prayer, on penance, could hardly suit the day better. If you are ill or frail yourself, you may be excused from fasting, as our Ash Wednesday page explains. When February 11 falls on a weekday of Lent, the Mass is that of the Lenten day, and the priest may take its opening prayer from the memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes; on Ash Wednesday itself even that gives way.
Day 1 (February 2): Ready to help
Day 1 begins at Cana, where Mary saw a need before anyone asked her to meet it: “And the wine failing, the mother of Jesus saith to him: They have no wine” (John 2:3). The 1876 novena opens with that same readiness. February 2 is also the Presentation of the Lord, when candles are blessed; light one for the person you are praying for, and name the intention you will carry through all nine days. Pray:
O our dear Lady of Lourdes, bless me and help me. Thou, whom the Saints have proclaimed so full of pity and kindness toward us,—thou, who art everywhere invoked with so much confidence,—thou, who hast deigned to appear in the grotto of Lourdes as a sweet messenger of grace and mercy, with a smile of motherly tenderness on thy lips,—show now thy goodness toward me, thy poor child. Obtain for me, I beseech thee, the graces I stand in need of for my sanctification; obtain for me patience in suffering; and if it be God’s will, obtain for me restoration to health, (or whatever other favor is specially asked for in the novena.) Amen.
Our dear Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.
Day 2 (February 3): Whatever he tells you
Day 2 stays at the wedding, where Mary turned from her Son to the servants: “His mother saith to the waiters: Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye” (John 2:5). The prayer leans on her standing with God in the warm language of its century: her prayers are never refused because, as at Cana, she wants only what her Son wills. If the cure you ask for does not come, that is no sign she has stopped praying for you; keep asking, too, for the patience this prayer names first. February 3 is St. Blaise’s day, when many parishes bless throats, a good blessing to ask for someone who is ill. Pray:
O our blessed Lady of Lourdes, thou whose influence with Almighty God is so great that thy prayers are never refused, have pity on me thy needy child. O Virgin most holy! O Virgin most powerful! turn not away from me, though all unworthy, nor disdain to plead in my behalf. Heed not my unworthiness, but the promptings of thy own heart, thou who art as rich in mercy as in power. Use thy boundless influence to obtain for me patience in my sufferings, restoration to health (or other favor), and the grace to make a good use of it for the glory of God. Amen.
Our dear Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.
Day 3 (February 4): Pray for sinners
Day 3 takes up the lady’s request that Bernadette pray for sinners, and the prayer counts the one praying among them. Jesus said of his own mission: “I came not to call the just, but sinners to penance” (Luke 5:32). Before you ask for anything today, ask for a clean heart, and pray for one person who has drifted far from God. Pray:
O our compassionate Lady of Lourdes, who hast shown thy affection for poor sinners by commanding Bernadette to pray for them and to get others to pray for them, exercise now thy compassion in my regard. O my Mother and my advocate, I know that my sins render me unworthy to approach thee; but I know also, sweet Refuge of sinners, that thy goodness will not reject me. I come to thee then with humble confidence. I lay all my miseries before thee, and implore thy help. O above all things obtain for me true repentance for my sins, and entire pardon for them. And if it be the holy will of God, obtain for me restoration to health, and the grace to make a good use of it for the glory of God.
Our dear Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.
Day 4 (February 5): Mercy and confession
Day 4 is about forgiveness, and the book’s meditation for the day points straight to confession. Scripture states the promise plainly: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all iniquity” (1 John 1:9). If confession keeps slipping down your list, put a date on it now; if you cannot leave the house, ask your parish to send a priest. When the prayer says her mercy “has never failed any one”, it speaks with the confidence of the Memorare: nobody who turns to her is left alone, even when the help that comes is not the help we named. Pray:
O our blessed Lady of Lourdes, I come to claim a share in thy boundless compassion and goodness. Remember that thy mercy has never failed any one. Nay, permit me even to remind thee, that whatever gifts thou hast of grace and glory, even to thy divine maternity, thou owest all in a certain sense to poor sinners, since it was for sinners that God became thy Son. Look on me, then, O Mary, and bless me, and help me. Obtain for me purity of soul and health of body. Amen.
Our dear Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.
Day 5 (February 6): Pilgrims from afar
Day 5 thinks of Lourdes as a place of pilgrims, though most who pray to Our Lady of Lourdes will never stand at the grotto. The pilgrim psalm fits the day: “I rejoiced at the things that were said to me: We shall go into the house of the Lord” (Psalms 121:1). The novena was translated from the French, and today’s prayer is for France, where the grotto stands, written when that country was going through hard years; say it for France, and add your own country. Pray:
O our Lady of Lourdes, special protectress of France, we all unite in thanking thee for thy goodness to that favored country. O be her protectress now above all in these troublous times; dispel the cloud of sin and infidelity that now obscures her, and make her shine more brightly than ever with the light of faith and virtue. We thank thee too for the blessings which from her shrines, and especially from Lourdes, thou hast dispensed throughout the world. Deign, dear Mother, to make me now a sharer in those blessings, both spiritual and temporal. O if it be the will of God, obtain for me restoration to health; but if that should be a danger to my soul, I ask only for resignation and patience unto the end. Amen.
Our dear Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.
Day 6 (February 7): Patience
Day 6 asks for patience, the grace the sick need most and find hardest to keep. Paul begged three times to be rid of his own trouble and was told: “My grace is sufficient for thee; for power is made perfect in infirmity” (2 Corinthians 12:9). The prayer asks for a cure and, if a cure is not for the good of the soul, for peace with what remains. Wanting both is no failure of faith. Pray:
O our sweet Lady of Lourdes, during thy whole life the bitter cup of suffering was always at thy lips, and thou didst never murmur. Alas! how different have been my dispositions! With all my heart I regret my want of generosity and resignation, and I now desire to do better. Obtain for me the courage and patience that I need in all my trials, and especially in these present sufferings. I offer them up through thy hands in atonement for my sins, and for the good of the holy Church. Deign, our dear Lady of Lourdes, to obtain my cure. But should that not be for the good of my soul, obtain for me perfect resignation and patience. Amen.
Our dear Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.
Day 7 (February 8): Happy in the next world
Day 7 recalls the words Bernadette reported from the third apparition: the lady promised her happiness, not in this life but in the life to come. The prayer turns that hope toward the sacraments, and Scripture names the one meant for the sick: “Is any man sick among you? Let him bring in the priests of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord” (James 5:14). If someone you love is seriously ill, today is a good day to call the parish. Pray:
O our dear Lady of Lourdes, who didst say to Bernadette: “I promise to make thee happy, not in this world but in the world to come,” help me to be less intent upon the gratifications of this life, and more desirous of the happiness of heaven. Make me understand what treasures are hidden in suffering, that I may not waste them. Enable me rightly to appreciate the strengthening and sanctifying sacraments, that I may receive them devoutly and profitably. O by thy bitter sufferings at the foot of the Cross, obtain for me patience in my sufferings, and, if it be the holy will of God, restoration to health. Amen.
Our dear Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.
Day 8 (February 9): “I am the Immaculate Conception”
Day 8 turns to the name the lady gave on March 25, 1858, when Bernadette asked who she was. The name means that Mary, by the grace of her Son, never for an instant carried original sin, not even at her own conception; it concerns her own beginning, not how Jesus was conceived. The Song of Songs supplies the old image for that name: “Thou art all fair, O my love, and there is not a spot in thee” (Canticle of Canticles 4:7). The prayer asks for purity and for strength when temptation comes. Its line about dying rather than sinning is how the saints spoke of their hatred of sin; it asks for grace, not for clenched teeth. Pray:
O our blessed Lady of Lourdes, the Immaculate Conception, Virgin most pure and stainless, obtain for me the grace to be chaste, to avoid all occasions of sin, and to have recourse to prayer whenever I am tempted by the devil, the world, or the flesh. Let me rather die than live to commit sin. But if it be the holy will of God, O obtain for me my health, and grace to make use of it for practising virtue and gaining heaven. Amen.
Our dear Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.
Day 9 (February 10, the eve): Penance
Day 9 hears the message of the eighth apparition, on February 24, 1858: penance, offered for sinners. The prophet Joel says it in the first reading of Ash Wednesday: “Now therefore saith the Lord: Be converted to me with all your heart, in fasting, and in weeping, and in mourning” (Joel 2:12). In the years when this day is Ash Wednesday, the novena ends on the day Lent begins. The prayer calls the illness “the penance which God sends me”. That is no verdict that you, or the one you pray for, are ill because of some sin: Jesus refused that reading when his disciples asked it about the man born blind in John’s Gospel. It means that suffering nobody chose can still be offered with Christ’s, for yourself and for others, as Bernadette offered hers in the convent infirmary. Then the prayer closes the nine days by giving the outcome back to God. Pray:
O our Lady of Lourdes, who hast so strongly recommended penance, help me to accept as I ought the penance which God sends me, and to profit by the sufferings which I have to bear. Enable me to understand rightly the wickedness of sin, and how terrible are its consequences for this life and for the life to come. And may this understanding make me eager to do all possible penance for the sins I have committed, and careful not to fall into them again. May this holy novena have the effect of lastingly increasing my devotion toward thee, dear Mother; and at its close I again beseech thee, if it be for the best, to obtain my restoration to health, though I add, in the sincerity of my soul, not my will, but God’s will and thine be done. Amen.
Our dear Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.
February 11: the feast and the World Day of the Sick
On February 11, the day Bernadette first saw the lady, the Church keeps the optional memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, and since 1993 the day has also been the World Day of the Sick. John Paul II wanted it to be “a special time of prayer and sharing”. Many parishes celebrate the anointing of the sick that day. A Boston parish printed this prayer for Benediction in its Lourdes novena leaflet, approved in 1921. It is an English form of the feast’s collect in the Missal of that time, when the day was called the Apparition of the Blessed Virgin, and it asks for “health of mind and body”:
O God, who by the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, didst prepare a worthy habitation for thy Son, suppliantly we beseech Thee: that we who celebrate the Apparition of the same Blessed Virgin, may obtain health of mind and body, through the same Jesus Christ Thy Son, Our Lord who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in union with the Holy Ghost, world without end. Amen.
The Mass of the memorial today has a prayer of its own, and when February 11 falls in Lent the Mass is that of the Lenten weekday. Either way the day belongs to the sick: visit someone who is ill if you can, or call them.
Praying for healing: the sick and the people caring for them
Most people who look for this novena are praying for someone who is ill, or are ill themselves. The Catechism is honest with them: “even the most intense prayers do not always obtain the healing of all illnesses” (CCC 1508). That is why seven of the nine prayers in the 1876 novena ask for health only if God wills it, and five ask for patience as well. Days 2 and 4 ask for health without a condition, and there is no fault in that. Pray for the cure you long for, plainly and without embarrassment; the Gospels are full of people who did. Jesus asked a man who had lain ill for thirty-eight years: “Wilt thou be made whole?” (John 5:6). He still asks it, though what he gives is not always what we hoped for.
The 1876 book is gentle with the sick: if suffering makes reading too hard, “use only the short prayer assigned for each day.” Whoever keeps watch beside a bed can pray the nine days that way, one minute at a time. For someone with cancer there is also the St. Peregrine novena, and for any illness a prayer for a loved one who is sick. A prayer written for this page, for the sick and the people at their side:
Father of mercies,
look on N., and on all who lie ill this night.
Hear Mary, health of the weak, who prays with us:
heal them in body, if that is your will,
and give them your peace, whatever comes.
Strengthen the hands that nurse them,
and keep me faithful when I am tired.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
At “N.”, say the name of the person you are praying for, or your own.
Other Lourdes novenas and prayers
Searching online brings up many Lourdes novenas, such as the popular one that begins “Be blessed, O most pure Virgin”; their origins are often hard to trace. This page keeps to the 1876 novena, which its translator came to know at the grotto when the shrine was less than twenty years old. A few related devotions:
- The Miraculous Medal novena, November 18 to 26. Its invocation, “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee”, comes from Paris in 1830, and at Lourdes the lady named herself with the same mystery, four years after the dogma was defined; the doctrine is explained on the Immaculate Conception page.
- A novena to St. Bernadette. She died at Nevers on April 16, 1879, and was canonized on December 8, 1933, for the way she answered grace rather than for having seen the apparitions, as the Sanctuary puts it. Her story and the eighteen apparitions are on our Our Lady of Lourdes page. Some pray a novena to her from April 7 to 15, the eve of the anniversary of her death; her day is not on the calendar of the United States.
- A “three-day miracle prayer”. No prayer binds God to work a miracle, in three days or in nine. Pray the novena with trust and leave the answer to him.
“Him when Jesus had seen lying, and knew that he had been now a long time, he saith to him: Wilt thou be made whole?”
Go deeper
What is the Our Lady of Lourdes novena?
The Our Lady of Lourdes novena fills the nine days before February 11, the day in 1858 when Bernadette Soubirous, a poor girl of fourteen, first saw a young lady all in white standing in a hollow of the rock of Massabielle, outside Lourdes in southwest France. The lady came back seventeen more times, the last on July 16, and on March 25 she gave her name: “I am the Immaculate Conception.” The spring Bernadette scratched out of the mud at the lady’s word still runs, and Lourdes became the shrine of the sick. The story of the apparitions, the water and St. Bernadette is told on our page about Our Lady of Lourdes; this page keeps to the nine days of prayer. Since 1993 February 11 has also been the World Day of the Sick, instituted by John Paul II, so this is above all a novena for the sick. It already was in 1876, when a Baltimore publisher brought out an English novena “for the use of the sick and afflicted”, translated from the French by a man who had come to know it at the grotto. Its nine prayers are the ones on this page. All nine ask Mary’s prayers for health, and five of them ask for patience too; seven ask for health only if it is God’s will, and the last hands the outcome to God outright. Every day on this page adds a short reading from the Douay-Rheims Bible and a few lines of our own. The bishop of Tarbes approved the apparitions in 1862, yet Lourdes, like every private revelation, adds nothing to what Christ revealed (CCC 67), and no Catholic is bound to pray this novena. It promises nothing; it is nine days of asking, and of learning to trust God with the answer.
Keeping the nine days
Start on February 2 and carry one intention through to February 10. Many people keep these nine days for a sick friend or relative; it is just as fitting to keep them for yourself. Each day takes about five minutes. Make the Sign of the Cross, read the Scripture line for the day with the short note beside it, then say the day’s prayer. Then say three times, as the 1876 book directs on its first two days, “Our dear Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.” If you wish, end with the prayer “O Immaculate Virgin”, which the book keeps for the close of the nine days but which suits every one of them, or with a decade of the Rosary, which Bernadette took out and prayed at the first apparition. Missed a day? Rejoin the novena at today’s number and finish with everyone else. For anyone too ill to read much, the day’s prayer alone is enough. On February 11, go to Mass if you can. If your parish offers the anointing of the sick that day, bring the person you have been praying for, or ask for it yourself if you are seriously ill or frail with age.
Questions people ask
When does the Our Lady of Lourdes novena start?
On February 2, the feast of the Presentation, so that Day 9 falls on February 10, the day before the feast. Some parishes start on February 3 and finish on February 11 instead, as the Sanctuary of Lourdes has done for its own novena; the prayers on this page fit either way.
What is the healing prayer to Our Lady of Lourdes?
The best known begins “O ever Immaculate Virgin, Mother of mercy, Health of the sick” and is often said every day of the novena. Its older form, from 1876, is the closing prayer on this page. Like every Catholic prayer for healing, it asks; it does not command.
Is there a 3-day miracle prayer to Our Lady of Lourdes?
Not as a prayer of the Church. Versions that promise a miracle within three days, or tell you to copy them out and pass them on, circulate online, and the Catechism counts trust in that kind of formula as superstition (CCC 2111). Pray to Our Lady of Lourdes with trust, for nine days or for one, and leave the answer to God.
What did the Virgin Mary say at Lourdes?
Very little, and briefly. She asked Bernadette to come back to the grotto daily for fifteen days, to pray for sinners, to do penance, to drink and wash at the spring, and to ask the priests for processions and a chapel. On March 25, 1858, she gave her name: “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
Do I need Lourdes water to pray the novena?
No. The 1876 book says so itself: “The use of the novena does not necessarily suppose the use of the water.” Lourdes water is plain water from the spring Bernadette uncovered; it is not holy water unless a priest blesses it, and it is a sign that points to prayer, not a remedy.
What if Ash Wednesday falls during the novena?
Keep both. Fast and abstain as the Church asks, unless illness or age excuses you, and pray the day of the novena as usual; its last day is about penance. If February 11 falls in Lent, the Mass is that of the Lenten day, though the priest may still take its opening prayer from Our Lady of Lourdes unless the 11th is Ash Wednesday.
Can I make up a missed day?
Yes: say the missed day’s prayer along with today’s, or just rejoin the novena at today’s number. For anyone who is ill, the 1876 book allows the shortest way of all: the day’s prayer on its own.
