The Sacred Heart of Jesus Novena
Nine days to the feast that falls nineteen days after Pentecost
The Sacred Heart of Jesus Novena is nine days of prayer asking The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus to intercede, traditionally prayed for a heart made less hard: for one’s own coldness, for a family, and in reparation, which is the word this devotion uses and does not soften. The feast day is The Friday nineteen days after Pentecost. AngelGuard publishes when to begin, how the nine days work, and what the novena asks for.
Quick facts
What is the The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus novena?
The Sacred Heart Novena is nine days leading to the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, which falls on the Friday nineteen days after Pentecost and therefore moves each year with Easter. The devotion in its present form comes from Paray-le-Monial in France, where between 1673 and 1675 a Visitation sister, Margaret Mary Alacoque, recorded a series of apparitions in which Christ showed her his heart and asked for a feast, for Communion on the first Friday of the month, and for reparation. The image most people know — a heart crowned with thorns and flame — comes from those accounts. What the devotion is about is easy to state and uncomfortable to sit with. It takes the most physical possible image of the interior life and applies it to God: not an idea of love but an organ, wounded, still working. The traditional word for what it asks is reparation, which does not mean paying God back. It means turning toward something one has been turning away from. One distinction is worth keeping. Twelve promises are traditionally associated with these apparitions, including one about final perseverance for those who keep the First Fridays. The Church permits and encourages the devotion; the promises belong to private revelation and are not doctrine. They can be held, and they should not be treated as a contract.
How to pray it
Time it to the solemnity if you can. Nine days back from the Friday nineteen days after Pentecost puts the first day in the week after Corpus Christi, and the whole stretch sits inside the same movement of the season. Pray it for a particular hardness rather than in general. The devotion is about a heart, and “make me more loving” is not a heart, it is a slogan. The person you have stopped speaking to is a heart. If you take up the First Fridays, take them up as a practice rather than as a policy with a payout. Nine consecutive first Fridays is a real discipline and worth doing; doing it to secure a promise inverts what the devotion is asking for. And let it be bodily. This is the least abstract devotion in the Church. Kneel, if you can kneel. It suits it.
About the prayer text
Several versions of this novena circulate, and the wording is traditional rather than something to be improvised. Rather than publish a text we have not verified against a reliable Catholic source, this page gives you the structure, the timing, and the intention. Take the words themselves from your parish, your missal, or a Catholic publisher, and stay with one version for the full nine days.
Frequently Asked Questions
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